A screen test for greener movie production in Germany

Most of the actors took the train instead of planes, traveling up to seven hours to the film set in the southwest corner of Germany.

Many forwent individual hotel rooms and roomed together in apartments. Crew members — and even the star actress — used bicycles to get around town.

Paper plates, plastic utensils and disposable batteries were banned.

Welcome to the production of a recent episode of “Tatort,” one of Germany’s most popular series of movies made for television — and a testing ground for what some in the entertainment industry hope will become a model for environmentally responsible production.

In a country that relies on renewable energy to a greater extent than most other major economies, movie and television companies here have been out of step.

That is largely because of the transient nature of production, as mini-cities emerge in shooting locations only to be torn down a month or two later. The industry has tended to view cutting emissions and waste as a costly burden.

“There’s an incredible amount of garbage and wasted resources at a typical movie set,” filmmaker Christian Schega said.

A nonprofit, the MFG Public Film Fund Baden-Wuerttemberg, persuaded the makers of “Tatort” to go green for one episode to demonstrate that another approach was possible. The nonprofit paid about $57,000 to hire Schega as a “sustainability manager” to oversee the effort and a researcher to study it.

In all, making the episode produced 80.3 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 24 days. That was 60 metric tons less than the 45-person crew would normally generate — a 43% reduction.

The savings on its own is negligible in terms of slowing global warming. Germany emitted 920 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, the last year for which data are available.

Even with its 1,000 or so movie productions a year, Germany’s entertainment industry barely contributes to the problem.

But supporters of the “Tatort” effort say those calculations miss the point. They note that because the film industry plays such an important role in the culture, it has the power to influence the wider conversation on global warming.

Each 90-minute episode of “Tatort,” or “Crime Scene,” a detective drama that has been on the air since 1970, attracts as many as 10 million viewers each week.

Pascal Nothdurft, who produced the carbon-cutting episode, which aired last week, said he plans to use many of the environmentally sensitive practices — especially those that don’t add to the overall cost — in future productions. But he said that some measures may prove too costly, such as catering with locally grown food only.

Without government regulation or adoption of new standards by the industry, such choices will continue to be left up to individual production companies.

Nothdurft said some of his peers have been hypocritical on the issue for preaching about the virtues of environmental responsibility while failing to practice it in their work.

“Some people in the industry have been acting like total slobs as far as the environment goes when they get to their sets,” he said.

Their country as a whole is doing much better. Since 1990, Germany has reduced its emissions by 27%, according to the government. It is the world’s fourth-biggest economy but the sixth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, thanks in part to a shift to wind, solar and other renewable energy sources that now provide a third of its electricity.

Kirschbaum is a special correspondent.