The Stage Centre recognises that businesses can negatively impact the environment. We are committed to promoting environmental sustainability in everything we do, to incorporate the highest standards of sustainability into our activities and to minimise our impact on the environment. We endeavour to continually improve our environmental performance, and aim to achieve standards that exceed minimum levels required by legislation and general codes of practice.

We believe that it is our responsibility to reduce dependence on natural resources and minimise waste output and are committed to supporting the Paris Agreement (Dec 2015) which aims to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5C. We are further committed to the UK Climate Change Act which aims by 2050 for the net UK carbon account to be at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline, and the Mayor of London’s Environment Strategy (2017) aiming for London to be a zero carbon city and 65% of all waste to be recycled by 2050.

We also recognise that we are in a position to educate and inform people about the importance of environmental sustainability, and will actively communicate our values with our staff, users, local authority, suppliers, and local community/theatres. We will work to ensure that all our services and contractors share our values.

It is our policy to:

• Recycle as much waste material as possible

• Avoid the use of paper wherever possible. For example, sending correspondence, resources, invoices and quotes via email as PDF files.

• Recycling equipment that is no longer of use to the company.

• Reuse waste paper (from the printer) where possible, making use of the blank side for notes, etc.

• Purchase products made with recycled paper. For example, paper towels, printer paper

• Avoid unnecessary travel outside of rehersals, by making use of instant messaging, video and audio conferencing, telephone, and email.

• Hiring and repurposing set materials, props and costumes.

• Work with production teams to examine every step of the process of bringing shows to the stage and understand how to reduce their environmental impact.

Guiding Principles:

• To comply with, and exceed where practicable, all applicable legislation, regulations and codes of practice.

• To integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.

• To ensure that all staff are fully aware of our Sustainability Policy and are committed to implementing and improving it.

• To minimise the impact on sustainability of all office, production and rehearsal and transportation activities.

• To make partners aware of our Sustainability Policy, and encourage them to adopt sound sustainable management practices.

• To review and continually strive to improve our sustainability performance.

Practical Steps In order to Put These Principles into Practice

Travel and Meetings

• Walk, cycle and/or use public transport to attend sessions, meetings, site visits etc, apart from in exceptional circumstances where the alternatives are impractical and/or cost prohibitive.

• Include the full costs of more sustainable forms of transport in our financial proposals, rather than the least cost option which may involve travelling by car or air.

• Avoid physically travelling to meetings etc where alternatives are available and practical, such as using teleconferencing, video conferencing or web cams, and efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips. These options are also often more time efficient, while not sacrificing the benefits of regular contact.

Purchase of Equipment and Consumption of Resources

• Minimise our use of paper and other office consumables, for example by double-siding all paper used, and identifying opportunities to reduce waste.
  As far as possible arrange for the reuse or recycling of office waste, including paper, computer supplies and redundant equipment.

• Reduce the energy consumption of office equipment by purchasing energy efficient equipment and good housekeeping.

• Minimise printing of resources - using digitised sharing of resources where possible.

We expect all people that engage with us to take our commitment to environmental sustainability seriously and to implement this policy in the workplace. For our Students and hosting venues we will provide the information to allow them to make positive choices when working with us.

This policy is reviewed annually