Throughout 2025, we have continued to drive progress across all three areas of the Theatre Green Book: Productions, Buildings and Operations.
Here's an overview of our achievements this year.
Productions
Hansel & Gretel became our first full production where our technical teams tracked materials in detail. We also embedded an environmental theme throughout the storyline of the production.
The proportion of materials that were recycled or made from recycled materials were:
- Set: 36%
- Props: 89%
- Costumes & wigs: 34%
Across the whole production 38% of all materials were recycled or from recycled sources. All of the materials will be stored and reused for future revivals.
Although we didn’t reach the Theatre Green Book’s intermediate target this time, the learning gained has been invaluable and will inform our sustainability approach for future productions.
This year we also developed a Green Rider which was shared with all venues on the children’s ballet tour in spring 2025. We plan to extend this across our mainstage tour from March 2026.
Buildings
We’re pleased to have hit the intermediate target for buildings, with more improvements planned for 2026.
We’ve seen significant reduction in our energy and water consumption this year.
Energy
- Reduced CO2e emissions by 17.5 tonnes from 2022/23 to 2023/24.
- A further 10 tonne reduction from 2023/24 to 2024/25.
Water
- Reduced water related CO2e emissions from 68 to 35 tonnes between 2022/23 and 2024/25.
This reduction was supported by upgrading taps across the building. Our previous fixtures frequently caused unnecessary water waste. This simple change has had a meaningful impact.
Waste
2025/26 marks another year of zero waste sent to landfill, that's two years in a row!
Operations
We trained nine additional staff members in Carbon Literacy this year, enabling us to hit our company wide target of 25% of all staff trained.
In April 2025, the Environment & Sustainability Committee delivered a successful Green Week, with engagement building wide. Highlights included:
- Swap Shop - Staff brought in unwanted items to exchange, with remaining items donated to charity.
- Book Swap Relocation – Our book swap was moved to the foyer for the week, opening it up to visitors and encouraging new reading discoveries.
- Big Clean Up – Across all levels of the building, staff were encouraged to clear out items they no longer needed for recycling or rehoming. We also ran a ‘digital detox’ focussing on managing digital storage and reducing our carbon footprint. Staff sorted through emails they no longer needed and tidied up their saved files. Thanks for staff efforts and targeted work from our IT and Facilities teams, we successfully reduced the amount of equipment used.
Header image by Jonathan Taylor.
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