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Wednesday
11am-4pm
Thursday
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Sustainability

Sustainability at Northern Stage

We’ve been working closely with Theatre Green Book and theatres across the UK to ensure that our work on and off stage is as sustainable as possible.  

The Theatre Green Book sets out three levels of sustainability: basic, intermediate and advanced. 

We’re proud to have achieved the basic level of sustainability for our building and are working towards reaching the basic level for our productions and operations – but we won’t stop until we’ve reached the advanced level of sustainability in all areas.  

It’s a long process, but every step helps. Our current progress includes:  

Café Bar
  • Reducing single use plastic and introducing reusable and recyclable packaging
  • Introducing Too Good to Go to reduce waste  
  • Moving our Café Bar menus towards more plant-based items  
  • Working with local suppliers to limit carbon emissions.
Operations
  • Reducing paper usage across our entire company, especially marketing materials and paper tickets  
  • Choosing a local, eco-friendly print company and working with distribution companies who use electric vehicles to avoid carbon emissions 
  • Supporting biodiversity with our plants and living walls  
  • Minimising water usage across the building and utilising rainwater  
  • Investing in energy efficient systems  
  • Monitoring business travel using a travel calculator and offering cycling schemes and travel passes to our staff  
  • Rolling out Carbon Literacy training to staff. 
Productions
  • Cataloguing our wardrobe, furniture, props, materials and more to easily assess what costume options we have before we consider buying or creating new pieces 
  • Thinking of every item’s life cycle. Reusing and recycling where we can and ensuring it can all be reused in the future  
  • Using Green Guidance for designers, which sets out our commitment to the Theatre Green Book and outlines to designers what we expect from them and how we’ll support them to work sustainably 
  • Reviewing every stage of design and production, analysing all materials used, to keep the production on track and as green as possible  
  • Researching more sustainable materials and methods of construction, with the aim of only purchasing environmentally friendly materials from now on, and using building techniques that mean we can reuse components in the future. 

“Without the cultural sector playing its part in helping current and future society to move towards a more sustainable way of life, this essential shift will not happen.” 

– Creative Carbon Scotland, 2020 

How can you help us with our green mission?  

  • Consider how you travel to us – walk or use public transport where possible  
  • When booking shows, choose to receive e-tickets over paper tickets where you can 
  • We are beginning to offer more digital programmes, so please consider this over a physical copy when attending our shows