The German way to eco-friendly cinemas
by Elisabetta Brunella

They announced it a year ago: the German associations representing arthouse, municipal, and commercial cinema exhibitors would commit to identifying minimum ecological standards for theatres aiming to reduce their environmental impact.

The reasons for this choice are clear to see: environmental awareness has increased among both citizens - and therefore cinema-goers - and institutions; new laws, for example, require the use of recyclable materials as much as possible; energy costs have risen…

Thus, cinemas are in a period of great transformation and must prepare to face these new challenges. For this reason, the industry itself has decided to take action to define the first steps to make movie theatres more environmentally friendly. Who better than exhibitors themselves to know which areas require priority intervention to make their daily operations more sustainable?

Thus, from an initial effort launched at the 2024 Exhibitors’ National Congress, the areas on which to focus emerged and the 17 sustainable development goals were defined.
The next phase involved working groups coordinated by Daniel Wuschansky of the AG Kino - Gilde association, supported by Sophie Sorber of HDF Kino and Johannes Litschel of the Bundesverband kommunale Filmarbeit (BkF).

It's no coincidence that coordination was entrusted to a representative of AG Kino - Gilde: this association, in fact, had been promoting the "KINO.natürlich" initiative for years, which - as the name suggests - had provided information on environmentally friendly practices that individual movie theatres could adopt. This experience sparked the idea for a much broader and more structured project, aimed at the entire German exhibition sector, which received the support of BKM (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).

Thus, the ÖMiK project was born, also inspired by initiatives in other sectors (such as the German Museums Association) or in other countries (such as the Austrian Ecolabel).

In many ways, cinemas and museums face similar challenges: just think of energy consumption for lighting, heating, and air conditioning. In other respects, cinemas have specific characteristics, such as the role of concessions and even catering. These crucial activities - popcorn sales often account for a significant portion of theaters' budgets - entail sensitive issues, such as container reuse, raw material procurement, and waste management.

The project, named ÖMiK, or Minimum Ecological Standards in Cinemas, was designed to propose solutions suited to different types of cinemas and their investment capacity. But it doesn't stop there: it also provides tools to measure the effectiveness of the measures implemented, also identifying subsequent steps to be adopted to increase the level of environmental compatibility of each specific facility.
Its general presentation took place at the recent German Exhibitors’ Congress in Baden-Baden, which was followed by a workshop attended by a select group of operators.

The “Guide” presenting the minimum ecological standards is now available online on the interactive website https://ömik.de/: it includes not only the basic measures that can be adopted by all types of cinemas, but also a Kino+ version that proposes even more effective solutions to reduce environmental impact, but which - being more complex and demanding - represent a further step towards complete sustainability.