Environmental Responsibility

We are a touring company, touring the UK and internationally. We also have two permanent building sites: our main home in East London, the 93,000 square foot Mulryan Centre for Dance, and a warehouse and workshop space in Kent.

We moved into the newly built Mulryan Centre for Dance in July 2019 and have been able to benefit from the advantages of a thoughtfully designed building which takes into account the environment and sustainability: in its fabric, orientation and form (eg airtightness, north facing glazing, thermal mass); in construction and materials (offsite construction reduced ENB’s carbon footprint by minimising deliveries and the number of people needed on site, GGBS concrete specified, spaces are left raw to reduce over cladding or unnecessary materials, timber paneling finishes act as a carbon store, green roof acting as a carbon store); intelligent systems (access to a carbon efficient district heating, LED lighting throughout, natural ventilation, a Building Management System that controls efficient heating and cooling, recycling facilities throughout) amongst many other features – resulting in a BREEAM ‘Very Good’ rating.

In addition, ENB’s productions are regularly revived and kept in our repertoire of work for a long period of time, meaning that we retain, re-use and re-furbish a large proportion of our sets and costumes for continued use.

Nevertheless, this does not diminish the recognition of our responsibility to the environment as well as our potential impact on it, through touring, use of energy for lighting and sound on-stage, heating and cooling in our building and the use of materials to create productions. As a society we are living through a climate emergency and as a leading arts organisation, we want to play a key role in driving environmental change within our industry to create a sustainable future for both ourselves as a company and for future generations.

Our actions across the next three years

We have set actions and goals that are ambitious, strategic and targeted, meaning we can monitor and measure the changes year on year, tracking and reporting on our progress as we go. We have joined the Julie’s Bicycle Creative Green scheme, which ensures we have a clear starting point and framework to measure our progress.

We set out below our key actions and aims over the next three years:

• Our Green Team, a cross departmental environmental steering group, including representatives from Director and Board level, will drive environmental change across all our activities.
• Monitor our building energy use, ensure all energy contracts are on green tariffs and work on strategies to lower use.
• Issue a Green Rider for use when touring to other venues. Actively work with organisations we tour to and partner with to help jointly lower our environmental impact.
• Promote sustainability and communicate our environmental responsibility actions to our staff, audiences, participants, visiting companies and our local community.
• Apply the Theatre Green Book guidelines for the creation of all new productions.
• Environmental responsibility to be included in all staff job descriptions.
• Apply a sustainable procurement policy for sourcing and working with all suppliers, freelancers, creatives.
• Target to recycle 50% of commercial waste.

How this will be monitored, measured and reported

We will continue to use the Julie’s Bicycle Creative Green Tools annually to ensure we can closely monitor the data and our progress year on year. We will report our progress regularly to our Board and update and adjust actions as needed. We will also report our progress to audiences and the public via our website.