Member Spotlight: Kelsey Evans
Kelsey Evans, a 10-year IATSE 891 member and founder of Keep It Green Recycling, is at the forefront of helping make BC’s motion picture industry more sustainable.
If you had asked Kelsey Evans 15 years ago if she’d end up running a bustling recycling business that’s helping make BC’s motion picture industry more sustainable, the ambitious Production Assistant might have given you a blank stare.
At that time, she was busy working her way towards her dream of becoming a Production Manager to oversee the day-to-day hustle of film and television sets.
It wouldn’t have been a totally wild question to ask her, though. She was, after all, personally recycling all the paper and bottles on the productions she worked for.
“When I first started in the film industry as a Production Assistant, we only recycled the bottles on set and some of the cardboard,” says Kelsey. “I was the one that would take it all home and deal with it on my own time after working my 15-hour shifts or more.”
Back then, Kelsey would fill up her vehicle at the end of a busy day with all the bottles and materials she could find at work. At the time, she never envisioned her efforts spiralling into something much bigger.
“In my SUV I would just go around to different productions, filling it full. Then I was on a job after Red Riding Hood and bought a really ugly used cargo van. They gave me a really good deal but as soon as I took it off the lot, the transmission went.”
That didn’t stop her, however.
Today, her company Keep It Green Recycling has a fleet of five vehicles. The company makes at least 60 stops a day to productions filming all over the Lower Mainland to pick up materials to be recycled or reused at the Material Reuse Warehouse.
Kelsey credits her work in the Production Office as the foundation for developing transferable skills that helped her grow a successful business. Mentorship from women in the Production Office (she credits Jennifer Metcalfe, Kathleen Whelan, Eva Morgan, and Nicole Oguchi) also helped her become a leader able to envision and execute scaling up recycling across the motion picture community.
“When we first started, it was just the offices that were recycling. Now all the departments ask for recycling right away,” says Kelsey.
She gets requests for recycling services from every single department involved in building movie and television magic. Serving one production can involve up to 15 pick-ups.
“People are always so supportive,” she says, “and seeing people happy about what we do, I think that helps me keep going and try to think of other ways that I can help our film industry to be the best industry out there.”
How it all began: From film school to business leader
Kelsey joined her high school’s film program and quickly fell in love with it. From there, she was propelled to go on to study film at Capilano University.
After graduating, Kelsey started working as a Locations Production Assistant, where her duties ranged from making sure everybody was safe on site, to setting up the garbage cans and the lunch tent, to sometimes doing traffic control. From there, she gained experience in the Production Office, the place overseeing all the logistics of filming.
Open-mindedness and a willingness to learn were all paramount, she says, to getting her foot in the door of the Production Office — and working her way up to Second Assistant and then Production Coordinator. Her advice for people starting out in the industry is to embrace new challenges.
“I think your work ethic and can-do behavior goes a long way,” says Kelsey.
“If anybody ever asks me to do something, I never say no. I just do it. I figure it out. I didn't care if I had to email someone and be like ‘hey, can you tell me how to do this?’ I've always tried to figure it out and tried to put my best foot forward.”
As someone with an ingrained passion for environmental stewardship since high school, Kelsey set up recycling bins in the Production Office and started getting a reputation as the go-to person for any recycling needs. She’d rummage through the dumpsters, pulling out electronics or set dec props wondering why they ended up there and how to find the items a better home.
Soon, other productions that shared the same studio space started asking if she’d help them with setting up recycling bins for them too. Eventually, demand was so high, she realized she needed to think bigger when it came to transporting the materials to be recycled. So, at the age of 24, she decided to start a business doing just that.
“It started off with one show as a business and then it just went from one to five to thirty really quick,” she says.
Kelsey, who recently received her IATSE 891 10-year pin, is at the forefront of efforts to make the industry more sustainable. For Earth Day, she hopes people working in the motion picture industry can commit to reusing materials as much as possible. She estimates only 10 per cent of BC’s motion picture industry currently uses the Material Reuse Warehouse.
“Everything. You name it — we got it. Fake rocks, furniture, PVC pipes, windows, doors, kitchen stuff, binders, brand new ink cartridges, coffee pods, you name it, we've probably had it,” describes Kelsey, listing some of the items found at the warehouse.
Run by Keep It Green Recycling and founded in partnership with Green Spark Group in 2018, the Material Reuse Warehouse allows productions to drop off materials to be stored for later use. Anybody, whether part of the industry or not, can browse through the items and take what they need for free. It saves the industry money and keeps reusable items out of the landfill.
“Instead of buying brand new, try to reuse as much as possible and if you’re going to talk back and forth with other productions, see if you can swap materials,” Kelsey says.
“I think material reuse is going to be a really big thing in the future, because we only have so many rainforests.”
