Celebrating Green Crew Heroes! Cindy Mkhwanazi, Operations Manager at Greenset SA
Green The Bid Crew Heroes is a series that highlights individuals who bring sustainable practices to any area of the production process, and seek to inspire others to do the same. Production can’t happen without all crew-members (both on set and off), and the same is true of their support of Green The Bid.
This week Green The Bid’s Jessie Nagel spoke with Cindy Mkhwanazi, Operations Manager at Greenset Production Sustainability Consultancy in South Africa, about her own great climate awakening, training Eco-stewards in Cape Town, and the need for vocal green leadership.
J.N. The Greenset website refers to you as the team builder. Can you elaborate on what that means?
C.M. Being an Eco-steward means being an ambassador for the planet. And my job as a team builder means finding the right climate ambassadors who genuinely believe they can make a positive environmental impact. Once they are part of our training program, we work together to help local productions to film more sustainably.
J.N. You work with graduates who have studied sustainability. What is that partnership like?
C.M. Greenset is a branch of the SA Film Academy. The graduates work as eco steward trainees We give them training material, case studies, and resources from our previous projects. I work closely with them on the first few productions they work on until they are able to conduct sustainability workshops and create a carbon reduction strategy for a department by themselves. The goal is to fully equip them to branch out and become sustainability coordinators eventually. We support them and work with them from prep right through until wrap.
We are constantly learning and finding new ways to be more sustainable which we share with the team.
J.N. What is the selection and training process for the Eco-Stewards involve?
C.M. We reach out to higher education institutions to inform faculty heads about the opportunity for their environmental graduates. They spread the word about this opportunity. Once every faculty head has communicated back to let us know about interested candidates, we have an Open day. We have one coming at the end of November. During the workshop, we give them information about the job and what they can expect. Those who are interested then apply to join our training program.
The application consists of a GI Handbook, which they complete within two weeks. Then send it back to us for assessment. After assessing, we will see whether they are suited for the job, and then they go onto our database for job placements. Most of the training takes place as in service training on a production.
J.N. What are the sustainability pillars Greenset advocates?
C.M. The pillars we advocate for are :
Creating awareness
Greener Habits & Alternatives
Responsible Waste management
Social Impact
Renewable Energy
These Pillars tie into practical and impactful environmental best practices that crews can implement on a production. Greensets action plan has 5 sustainability days of the week based on these pillars.
J.N. Did you have a mentor growing up?
C.M. I never had an official mentor. But growing up I tried to observe and learn from people I felt embodied something I wanted to be one day. I'm quite introverted, but when I saw how confidently Oprah Winfrey spoke on TV, I knew I had to find a way to conquer my shyness, to be more like her. I have many examples, most of them from my immediate community. So I'd say I had distant, unofficial mentors all around me, and on TV.
J.N. You mentioned that there was a pivotal event that sparked your journey to sustainability in production. Can you share the story with us?
C.M. Documentaries have always been my genre of choice, and I remember sitting at home with a vague knowledge of Climate change when I was in the 9th Grade. Ignorance was bliss. I turned on the TV, and The Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was on. Needless to say, my world was forever changed, and I just knew I had to spread the word of this great awakening. I went to my Afrikaans teacher the very next day (Afrikaans is one of the official languages in South Africa) . I told her about an awareness campaign I wanted to have yearly at my school called “Green Week! During Green Week, the students watch an impactful documentary, and then afterward, they do a fashion show, where the garments are made of recycled material and a few live performances for entertainment. From then I knew I had to create awareness about Climate Change, but in a creative and fun way.
J.N. Who are your heroes, green or otherwise, now?
C.M. My heroes right now are the social change makers who are actively changing narratives to move us forward as humanity. This is a generation that needs vocal leaders. My favorite hero right now is Vusi Thembekwayo. He is a global speaker, Venture Capitalist, and accomplished Author from South Africa.
J.N. What do you hope the South African production community adopts as common practice on shoots moving forward?
C.M.The South African production community needs to start seeing Sustainability Coordinators and Green PAs as integral crew members on a Film Set. Because, to know what your Carbon Footprint is, someone has to measure it. If you want to achieve a Zero-Waste Set, someone has to segregate the different waste streams into compostables, recyclables, and resources that can be donated. Creating meaningful employment within the circular economy shouldn't be a grudge purchase but adopted as a value add. GREENSET has developed a free to use carbon calculator and we want productions to measure their carbon footprint and offset it locally through social and environmental upliftment offset options.
----- Are you a crew hero or do you know one? We want to hear from you!
