London, UK. September 2024: Today, Sony reveals new research into employers’ approach to sustainability in the media and entertainment industry in Europe. Titled ‘Means & Mindsets: the state of sustainability in the media industry,’ the report sheds light on how seriously the industry is taking steps to become more environmentally conscious. ​ 

The research, which was conducted using Sony’s own European contact database, was aimed at presenting realistic view of the industry’s sustainability credentials, which included both positive changes already made, but also the barriers to further, more significant change. 

The encouraging news is the research found that while only 40% of businesses cared about being seen as more sustainable, nearly three-quarters of businesses (73%) have implemented operational changes to reduce their environmental impact. The most actioned were reviewing necessary travel requirements and headcount needed on-site (46% and 33%, respectively) and changes to operations while on-location (45%). 

Particularly interesting though, was that more than half of respondents didn’t agree that customers, end users or viewers were the driving force for media organisation’s making changes. Instead, they cited that their organisation’s employees had the greatest influence here. ​ 

Means and mindsets 

While the results show that businesses do care about being seen to be more environmentally friendly, the reality is that barriers getting in the way are as significant as they’ve ever been. It’s because of this that Sony asked what those barriers were. ​ 

It’s not a surprise that the financial investment required to be more sustainable as an industry was said to be the biggest barrier by respondents (46%). And cost was also noted by just short of 50% of people to be the reason their company isn’t actively reducing its environmental footprint. ​ 

And while more than half of people (52%) said that cost is at least sometimes considered in the existing procurement and buying processes, 55% did say that cost is thought to be more important than how sustainable a piece of equipment is. ​ 

More surprisingly perhaps, Sony’s research found that industry culture and behaviour was the second biggest barrier both for the wider industry (41%) and individual companies (46%) becoming more active in being more sustainable. ​ 

Olivier Bovis, Director, Head of Media Solutions Business at Sony Europe commented; “It’s clear from this research that for the industry to better address environmental challenges, businesses need to invest more into their own sustainability practices. 

“But beyond the financial aspect, we found a change in mindsets is what most needs to take place and that employees felt they had the most impact on making operational changes. ​ And it’s for that reason that we’re inviting businesses across the industry to use this to their advantage. 

“Sustainability should be considered a currency used to implement changes. We need to be making sure suppliers, partners and users are ‘kept honest’ as part of a movement for change, not just shrug it off because ‘this is how we’ve always done it’.” 

Key findings: 

For a further breakdown of the results, you can read ‘Money & mindsets: the state of sustainability in the media industry’ here and read more about Sony’s commitments to sustainability here. 

Notes to editors: ​  

Methodology:  

Sony used its own database in Q1 2024 to survey people working across the media and entertainment industries with the goal of assessing their views on how their organisation and the wider industry is approaching sustainability. ​ ​ 

385 respondents from the media and entertainment industry from eight countries: the UK, Germany, Poland, Spain, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden. To provide a view across the media industry, nine areas of work, including operations, post-production, sales, marketing and senior executive leadership were included in the survey. ​ 

To ensure respondents felt comfortable enough to respond honestly to our questions, we purposely didn’t ask any for identifiers like name or which organisations they worked for. 

About Sony Corporation 

Sony Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation and is responsible for the Entertainment, Technology & Services (ET&S) business. With the mission to “create the future of entertainment through the power of technology together with creators,” we aim to continue to deliver Kando* to people around the world. ​ 

For more information, visit: http://www.sony.net/ ​ 

 *Kando is a Japanese word that roughly translates to the sense of awe and emotion you feel when experiencing something beautiful and amazing for the first time.