TwoSides’ rebuttal was published in the Telegraph on 25 February
Print industry anti-greenwash group TwoSides has struck back against BBC plans to drop paper scripts for its dramas, describing them as a ‘poorly thought-through token environmental gesture’.
Responding to an article in the 9 February Daily Telegraph in which the BBC’s plans to cut paper usage for scripts in order to reduce its carbon footprint were reported, print industry campaign TwoSides issued a rebuttal that was published in the Telegraph’s Letters to the Editor on 25 February.
The original Telegraph article reported that BBC thought it had saved ‘the equivalent of 90 trees’ by cutting paper usage for scripts in the production of high profile dramas such as Casualty. The corporation is pursing an opt-in policy for those wanting paper scripts and is encouraging use of mobile devices as an alternative.
The TwoSides letter, which was signed by 126 print industry figures, claimed that the BBC’s decision was informed by a misleading “go paperless, go green” attitude and pointed out that tree planting by the paper industry had helped increased Europe’s forested area by 44,000 square kilometres between 2005 and 2015. It also cited the UK’s exceptional performance in paper recycling, with more than 70% recycled.
Paper also seems to be the choice of Dr Who and Broadchurch star David Tennant. Quoted in the Radio Times as struggling with the digital script alternatives during filming the new series of Broadchurch, which began transmission on 27 February, Tennant said: ‘We were all issued with different passwords for different things. So new bits of script would come through and you’d forget what your password was and have to phone somebody up and prove it was you. That drove me mad, if I’m honest. I’d phone up the office and go, “I need it on paper, I can’t cope!”‘
