The Business Case
Our call to action is for everyone involved in producing and making animation to treat sustainability as a dimension of how you work - not as an add-on or something to be filed in a report and forgotten. The question is whether we make it now, while we still have the time to get it right — or later, when the window has closed.
Canadian animation — particularly children's and youth content — has had a difficult few years. Production volume for children's television animation dropped by more than half in 2023/24, from $299 million to $146 million for English-language animation alone1. Small production companies and those working in the kids and animation sector were hit particularly hard by the broader industry downturn. When an industry is under that kind of pressure, sustainability can feel like a luxury.
That instinct is understandable, but sustainability is often framed as a cost. Instead, sustainability should be understood as something that adds value, reduces risk, and improves resilience.
Sustainability is a core competency. Federal and provincial funders are beginning to integrate sustainability into their requirements. Sustainability credentials are becoming conditions of funding, not optional extras. International co-production partners are increasingly expecting Canadian partners to meet local sustainability requirements. Producers who have built sustainable practices will have a genuine competitive advantage in those conversations.
The cost of inaction. Every production made without sustainability in mind is a missed opportunity to not only keep excess emissions from our air and waste from landfills, but also to build the workflow knowledge, the measurement data, the vendor relationships, and the industry credentials that will matter more with every passing year.
The Value of Sustainability
The business case for sustainability is about the value sustainable practices can deliver on both the business and creative side. The studios that will thrive in the next decade are those that have earned the trust of funders, partners, audiences, and workers by demonstrating that they take their responsibilities seriously — on screen and off.
Sustainability can save money. Optimizing render pipelines, extending hardware lifecycles, reducing unnecessary iterations, powering down idle machines are efficiency gains that show up directly on the bottom line. The greenest production choice and the most cost-effective one are often the same.
Sustainability drives innovation. Studios that commit to sustainable workflows interrogate how they work, considering which processes are necessary, which are habitual, which can be redesigned. That discipline consistently produces better, leaner, more inventive pipelines.
Sustainability attracts and retains talent. The people in this industry care deeply about the values of the organizations they work for. A studio with a credible sustainability commitment is a more compelling place to work — and in a competitive talent market, that matters.
Sustainability builds the foundation for what comes next. AI tools, real-time engines, cloud infrastructure — the technologies reshaping animation production are also the technologies whose environmental costs are least understood and most rapidly growing. Studios that have already built sustainability into their decision-making are far better equipped to adopt new tools responsibly, evaluate vendors critically, and avoid locking themselves into high-emission infrastructure that will become a liability.
Sustainability is good for people. And finally, and put simply, greening our industry is better for the planet and the people who live on it. We all need clean air and water, available food, and healthy environments for ourselves and our families. These things are no longer guaranteed. Being stewards of our planet is not only for activists, political parties, or workers with sustainability in their job title. Climate change and environmental degradation affects all of us, and so we are all on the hook to make change happen.
