By July 2021, they write, the first season of the show, which is equivalent to around three to four films, had generated roughly 14,387 tonnes of carbon dioxide – five times what the British Film Commission estimates an average “tentpole”, or blockbuster, film would produce. Calculating how much waste the production had sent to landfill was more difficult – the team notes their figures won’t capture the total waste, as the company was using “multiple vendors” and “we still have a lot yet to count”.
One vendor reported collecting 11,433 cubic metres of landfill waste so far that season – about four-and-a-half Olympic-size swimming pools. A second collected 30.5 cubic metres of soft plastic and 1,885 cubic metres of landfill waste. A third reported having collected 355.5 tonnes of landfill waste – the weight of around 25 London double-decker buses.
The team had success with some initiatives: recycling office paper waste and batteries, installing an electric vehicle charging station at each studio, introducing re-usable water bottles, encouraging crew to eat vegetarian one day a week, and working with local disposal companies to compost or recycle 3,490 cubic metres of waste – but the scale of disposal remained enormous.