Strategy on Sustainability

Audiovisual Producers Finland – APFI, Finland’s trade association for producers of audiovisual content, is currently creating a national sustainability strategy which aims to help develop a more sustainable working culture in the film and television sector. The strategy will be built around the global Agenda2030 agenda for sustainable development and will cover social and cultural as well as economic and ecological responsibility.

Work on the national strategy began in the summer of 2021 and first the focus was on ecological aspects of productions (read more below). In October 2023 APFI started a project that concentrates on social, cultural and economical sustainability.

Ecological sustainability

APFI and its partners have partnered with UK-developed international albert toolkit for the use of Finland’s audiovisual industry at a national level. With albert the production companies can use a carbon calculator and get their productions certified. All the trainings and tools are free of charge. The 1st national statistics from Finland were published in April 2023, the report can be viewed on the right.

APFI organizes free albert trainings in Finnish and in English. The 2-hour training is available for all, and the schedules can be found here

If a production wants to get certified, work on sustainability should start in pre-production. Getting certified is not a requirement for using the carbon calculator. Information on the tools in English are provided by the albert UK team. (Update 02/2024 – please read the note under)

The albert tools are for professional productions and to use the online system the production company needs to be registered. To have your productions company registered, please contact albert@apfi.fi. If your production company is already registered, please contact the production company’s albert-admin to obtain a personal user account.

Inquiries on the ecology of the film & TV industry: anne.puolanne@apfi.fi
Inquiries on albert Finland: albert@apfi.fi

Update 02/2024 – the current albert agreement ends, further measures in Finland are planned

APFI and its partners agreed to cooperate with albert from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2024. During the spring of 2024, there will be discussions on further measures, i.e. how to continue and organize the work on ecology in Finland in the future

APFI for the beginning of 2024 is a resource within the framework of albert as before, but from July 2024 onwards the details are still open. If the cooperation between APFI/the industry and albert does not continue, albert has confirmed that from July onwards, production companies can freely use the carbon footprint calculator as before, but pursuing a certificate is not possible unless the production company itself has an agreement directly with albert.

Work on ecology in the Finnish film and TV industry is made possible by partners who not only fund but also commit to the work:

Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE
Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture AVEK
Finnish Film Foundation
The Finnish Television Academy
Business Finland
City of Helsinki
City of Forssa
Finnish Lapland Film Commission
North Finland Film Commission
West Finland Film Commission
East Finland Film Commission
Southeast Finland Film Commission
Film Tampere
Åland Film Commission
Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland
AVATE (union of Finnish Actors’ Union, Association of Finnish Film Directors SELO, and Writers Guild of Finland)

The starting of the strategy (02-08/2021) was supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture.