Carbon reduction
Since 2014/15, Culture for Climate Scotland has been working with Creative Scotland to provide a framework for carbon emissions reporting for organisations receiving regular funding from them and to support Green Champions in arts organisations across Scotland.
Since 2018/19, Creative Scotland-funded organisations have been required to submit a carbon management plan covering the duration of their funding, and are encouraged to develop a way to manage emissions into the future. Also in 2018/19 we began working with organisations receiving funding from the City of Edinburgh Council’s Culture Fund to support them creating their carbon management plans.
In 2021/22, we brought together organisations receiving funding from Creative Scotland and the City of Edinburgh with Edinburgh festival members of the Sustainability Working Group (ESWG) to report emissions and carbon management plans in one streamlined survey, which is the model we continue to use.
In 2022/23, we summarised the year’s reporting in a full public report: Greening culture: Are we on track? (opens a PDF 2.2MB).
NB: We published results from 2014 to 2023 under our old operating name: Creative Carbon Scotland.
Understanding your carbon emissions
In order to manage and reduce your emissions, you need to identify where they’re coming from, and to measure them as accurately as possible.
How can information on your carbon emissions help you?
Besides being central to your reporting (if you are required to report emissions), the measurement and collection of carbon emissions data can be useful to you as management information. Robust measuring often reveals unnecessary, runaway or preventable carbon emissions, enabling organisations to reduce their impact by identifying the key areas for improvement.
Many organisations also experience a double win of saving emissions and costs when they begin to implement carbon emission reductions.
Gathering information throughout the year and monitoring the different aspects of your footprint will help you make the most of the data you collect. Standardised reporting can also help you compare your emissions and resource consumption with similar organisations, helping you to identify examples of good practice and potential savings areas.
From our environmental reporting work since 2015, we have seen that this does work as shown in the graph below.
Where do your emissions come from?
To calculate your total carbon emissions you need to gather data relating to the following key areas of your organisation’s activity:
When you start to look into this, you will spend time defining the scope of your activities to understand the boundaries of your responsibilities. This is important to profile your organisation’s carbon emissions and will serve as the foundation of your monitoring year on year. You can visit the environmental reporting section of our website to see all areas of emissions that you should report.
Energy and utilities
For those organisations paying utility bills, energy use and water data should be relatively easy to gather, as bills from suppliers and meter systems should provide most of the information.
We recommend recording readings regularly throughout the year. This can be weekly or monthly depending on your access to meters. Try to avoid relying on estimated bills. Maintaining a record in a simple spreadsheet will help you to keep an eye on any unexpected increases in usage.
For organisations that work in a rented space where someone else pays the energy and utility bills, you should work with your landlord to provide this data. If this is not possible, we recommend using the tenant energy toolbox to estimate your emissions.
If you can, it is a good idea to switch energy supplier to an accredited renewable energy supplier as the Energy Saving Trust recommends. This will have no direct impact on your organisational footprint if you are still connected to the UK grid but, in supporting these suppliers, you will help shift the energy ‘mix’ of the UK grid to more sustainable sources.
Waste
For waste data, record the amount of landfill and recyclable waste that your office or venue generates. Estimate small amounts by counting the number of bin bags going into central collections.
For larger amounts, you should use reports your waste contractor provides. Conduct regular waste audits to make sure that your waste is going into the right streams. Make sure that you complement any recycling targets you set with appropriate signage to encourage responsible disposal.
Travel
Travel may also form a significant part of your carbon footprint. We recommend signing up to our web-based tool – Claim Expenses – to streamline your travel expenses claims and carry out associated carbon calculations.
Make sure you request mileage data from courier or van rental services that you use to transport equipment, set or props while on tour. We now also encourage you to include commuting data and audience travel in your organisation’s reporting.
Other sources
It’s also worth considering purchasing and digital.
Purchasing
Though it is likely that the previously mentioned emissions sources will be a greater proportion of your carbon footprint, making low-carbon and environmentally friendly choices when buying items is an important use of your influence and purchasing power.
We expect all organisations to have a sustainable procurement policy that explains the steps they are taking to reduce the impact of procurement, whether that is, for example, by using recycled materials or requiring all organisations in their supply chain to prove their sustainability credentials.
Digital
An increasing area of concern among organisations is the environmental impact of our digital practices. This could be from your website, creating digital artwork, and storing data and files among others. We recommend using Neuto’s website auditing tool to understand the impact of your website and Wholegrain Digital’s declutter tool to explore way to be more digitally sustainable.
Every organisation is different, so you might identify sources of emissions other than the ones we’ve noted here.
How can you calculate your emissions?
Each source of carbon emissions (e.g. electricity, water, gas) has a different conversion factor, calculated and updated each year by UK Government. To calculate your carbon footprint, you’ll need all the data you have available on the main sources of your emissions (see above) and the relevant conversion factors. We have a range of tools to help you with this such as our carbon management planning tool, quick carbon conversion guide and quick carbon management calculator, which can all be found on our environmental reporting tools page.
For background, current conversion factors are available on the UK Government’s website.
Carbon management planning
Creating a carbon management plan can be the best way for your organisation to understand emissions from your past activities and find lower carbon ways to achieve your objectives.
Like so many aspects of sustainability, a carbon management plan will look a little different for everyone, but is based on the same underlying principles. First, establish your baseline, then make your plan.
Establish your baseline
- Measure the emissions for your current activities.
- Identify what you can control and influence within these emissions.
- Decide what area(s) of emissions to work on based on the size of emissions and control/influence.
Carbon management planning
- Identify reduction actions for for your chosen emissions across a period of three years (and beyond).
- Estimate carbon savings from these reduction actions.
- Measure the result. If the reductions are working, continue. If not, reassess the approach.
You can research what other organisations have done or what options there are for your specific situation. The Theatre Green Book and Arts Green Book contain suggestions for all organisations, not only those working in theatre.
Identify control and influence
Once you have measured your emissions, you should work out which of these emissions you should reduce. You should focus on the largest emissions sources from your measuring and also think about whether these emissions are in your direct control or influence:
Control
These are emissions that you pay for and directly cause. For example, if you pay for artist travel and hotel stays or the energy consumption of your building, these would fall into this category.
Influence
These are emissions that you might cause indirectly or have some other influence over. For example, artists’ travel that you don’t pay for, the energy consumption of the venues you work in, travel of the audience coming to see your work.
Emissions that are in your control are often easiest to act on. Therefore, your first actions should focus on the largest emission sources that are within your control.
Using your influence
The positive impact of the arts can often come through influencing others. With this in mind, CMPs should also include emissions that aren’t part of your direct carbon footprint, but that you can influence and at least provisionally measure. For example, you could focus on reducing participant and audience travel, you might be planning to bring climate change-related shows into your programming, you might be part of a group advocating for industry-wide change. For some of these actions, you might not be able to associate specific emission reductions, but the narrative of what you are doing is still a valuable part of your carbon management plan.
Like all plans, the outcomes of changes may not always be what we expect, with results in some cases exceeding expectations and in others disappointing, but in all cases our understanding grows.
Environmental policy
It is good practice to have an environmental policy, which should help you to keep focus on carbon and other aspects of environmental sustainability. Your policy is something into which everyone in your organisation understands and has regular input, so keep it simple and practical.
Read our guide to developing an environmental policy.
If you would like more information, for example, on reporting results from previous years or have any other queries, please email: [email protected].