Theatre Green Book links up with national theatres to push for net zero

The Theatre Green Book has joined up with the UK’s three national theatres to form an association to drive change across the sector.

As part of this it has created a steering group, which comprises the national theatres alongside membership organisations the Association of British Theatre Technicians and the Society of London Theatre/UK Theatre. It also includes authors Paddy Dillon and Lisa Burger, structural engineers and sustainability specialists Buro Happold and the Theatres Trust, which is also acting as secretariat for the project.

The association supports the Theatre Green Book ambitions to achieve baseline standards across buildings operations and productions by the end of 2026. 

The Theatre Green Book was originally published during the pandemic and has since been used by all large UK subsidised theatres, the UK’s three national theatres and all UK opera houses. It won The Stage Award for Innovation in 2022.

A second edition is now planned, for which the steering group is doing extra work on its ’production calculator’, developed by theatremakers, which will help assess productions of any scale against Green Book targets for reuse and recycling, and will also provide a basic carbon calculation for the principal elements of the show. 

It also includes an improved building survey tool, designed to help theatres create basic sustainability plans for buildings and support carbon calculation for building energy. 

Finally, an operations tracker will help land and track change across all the varied elements of sustainable operations, such as transport and catering, and support carbon calculation for travel and transport. 

All the tools will be free to use and worksheet-based, allowing everyone to tailor them to their own use.

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