Sony report explores the barriers to a more sustainable media and entertainment industry

Sony has revealed new research into employers’ approach to sustainability in the media and entertainment industry in Europe. Titled ‘Means & Mindset: The state of sustainability in the media industry’, the report sheds light on how seriously the industry is taking steps to become more environmentally conscious.

The research, which was conducted using Sony’s own European contact database, was aimed at presenting a realistic view of the industry’s sustainability credentials, which included both positive changes already made, but also the barriers to further, more significant change.

The encouraging news is the research found that while only 40% of businesses cared about being seen as more sustainable, nearly three-quarters of businesses (73%) have implemented operational changes to reduce their environmental impact. The most actioned were reviewing necessary travel requirements and headcount needed on-site (46% and 33%, respectively) and changes to operations while on-location (45%).

Particularly interesting though, was that more than half of respondents didn’t agree that customers, end users or viewers were the driving force for media organisations making changes. Instead, they cited that their organisation’s employees had the greatest influence here.

While the results show that businesses do care about being seen to be more environmentally friendly, the reality is that barriers getting in the way are as significant as they’ve ever been. It’s because of this that Sony asked what those barriers were.

It’s not a surprise that the financial investment required to be more sustainable as an industry was said to be the biggest barrier by respondents (46%). Cost was also noted by just short of 50% of people to be the reason their company isn’t actively reducing its environmental footprint.

While more than half of people (52%) said that cost is at least sometimes considered in the existing procurement and buying processes, 55% did say that cost is thought to be more important than how sustainable a piece of equipment is.

More surprisingly perhaps, Sony’s research found that industry culture and behaviour was the second biggest barrier both for the wider industry (41%) and individual companies (46%) becoming more active in being more sustainable.

Olivier Bovis, director, head of media solutions business at Sony Europe, commented: “It’s clear from this research that for the industry to better address environmental challenges, businesses need to invest more into their own sustainability practices.

“But beyond the financial aspect, we found a change in mindsets is what most needs to take place and that employees felt they had the most impact on making operational changes. And it’s for that reason that we’re inviting businesses across the industry to use this to their advantage.

“Sustainability should be considered a currency used to implement changes. We need to be making sure suppliers, partners and users are ‘kept honest’ as part of a movement for change, not just shrug it off because ‘this is how we’ve always done it’.”

Read the full report.