Over the last few years we’ve been striving to reduce our carbon footprint to an absolute minimum. We’re doing this in a number of ways and have been recognised by Creative Carbon Scotland (CCS) for our efforts by giving us full marks in our recent Carbon Management Plan!
Creative Carbon Scotland are a charity who put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. They started their journey to embed environmental sustainability within the arts and cultural sector in Scotland in 2011. Since then the organisation has developed enormously. From aiming to help arts organisations to report their carbon emissions, they are now focusing on exploring the sector’s role in transforming our society to address climate change.
The Scottish and UK Governments have declared a Climate Emergency, and the 2019 amendment to the Scottish Climate Act commits Scotland to a 75% reduction in emissions by 2030, with zero carbon to be reached by 2045.
The Touring Network’s Operations Manager, Rhiannon McIntyre reports to CCS on our annual carbon footprint (measuring the travel and energy usage of staff, as well as that of anyone being paid directly by us) and forecasts ahead on how we can reduce our impact year on year. Rhiannon has implemented a system for the team which enables us to keep a close eye on our outputs easily and effectively.
Our latest report and carbon reduction plan shows that we are ahead of our target and have reduced our team’s travel emissions by 4%. The organisation’s carbon footprint in 2018-19 was 9 tonnes C02e (for reference, the average annual carbon footprint of a person living in the UK is 10 tonnes CO2e). Working as a remote team and as a digital-first organisation has had a huge impact on how we are reducing our impact on the environment; we have minimal energy overheads, and no daily commutes to consider, and ensure that our home working environments are as energy efficient as possible.
We recognise that, due to the nature of supporting communities across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, travel is always going to be a large part of our footprint. So, we are continuing our pledge to use public transport wherever possible, and offset our outputs through our partner Trees for Life at the end of each year.
If you are touring in the Highlands and Islands and want to know how you can help offset your impact please get in touch.