Sustainable Touring Toolbox

Accommodation

Choose accommodation that is on walking distance of the venue, so additional travel/transport can be avoided.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • Quickly realised

Note that for longer stays, self-catering accommodation can be both cheaper, more practical and have less environmental impact than hotel accommodation. The most environmentally friendly option for accommodation is staying with a friend, family or a colleague, as then your additional energy consumption is marginal compared to the energy use and waste associated with hotel or private flat rentals.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Low-cost implementation
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist

Stay in accommodation with green credentials.
✧ Bookdifferent.com is a social enterprise that uses the booking.com database to list accommodation with green credentials (measured by ecolabels, staygreencheck and the carbon footprint). Simply search, sort by CO2, and select the appropriate price/comfort level.

✧ Green Key International is an internationally recognised eco-label awarded to accommodations and other hospitality facilities that commit to sustainable business practices. Awarded establishments comply with strict criteria, independently verified through regular on-site audits. The programme is recognised and supported by the World Tourism Organization and United Nations Environmental Programme.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist

Catering

Prioritise locally sourced, organic, and seasonal produce and vegetarian over meat-based products while on tour (for artists) or for the catering options in your organisation (presenters).

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist

Work with the venue/promoter to choose green and ethical suppliers for food and drinks that will be sold to audiences.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Choose caterers who consider their environmental impacts.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Consider your hospitality rider. Only ask for quantities and things you are actually likely to consume, especially where it concerns fresh food with a short expiration date.

  • Artist
  • Quickly realised

Look into giving team members a reusable/refillable water bottle and work with venues to ensure everyone will have access to refill points backstage.

  • Quickly realised
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Marketing, merch & promotion

Use fairtrade textile for clothing merch, tote bags and the like.
✧ In Germany, look out for clothing and textile which is certified with the Grüne Knopf (Green Button). The certification means that the products are manufactured in line with social and environmental standards, based on criteria from the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist

For printed brochures and season programmes, develop an opt-in approach so only the amount of brochures that is requested is printed and distributed.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

If printing promotional materials, use 100% recycled paper.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Develop a digital promotion strategy as an alternative to posters, flyers and brochures for promo.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Programming & curation

While travelling for work, make use of the local public transport system instead of taxis or private cars.

  • Low-cost implementation
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Explore co-curatorship: put together a programming team that is based in different regions and can thereby limit travel distances to see work live.

  • High environmental impact 

Develop an environmental policy and action plan for your organisation. As part of your action plan, collect quality data, understand your high impact areas, and look for opportunities to improve. It’s recommended to appoint someone in the team to gather this data. This will help to firstly, take stock of where you are right now with regards to environmental sustainability, but also keep you accountable and help communicate your impact and inspire others.
✧ Julie’s Bicycle has a step-by-step guide here.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer
  • High communicative impact

Maximise the artist's stay at your venue/festival. Beyond performances, can you organise a Q&A, workshops, or other activities that engage with your local audience and artistic community? This decreases the per-performance footprint, and increases the climate handprint.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Programmers to travel less and smarter. Eliminate non-essential flying (such as e.g. for meetings) or set a no-fly rule for when the alternative road or rail travel time is less than eight (or six, or ten! up to you) hours.
Green Mobility lets you compare emissions from travel between different modes of transport (car, plane, rail, etc) (in German)

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Smarter and greener programming by way of collaborative programming with e.g. regional and/or cross-border networks. Connect with like-minded programmers and collaborate when inviting international and -continental artists.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Connect and collaborate with your suppliers: switch to a green energy provider for the venue/building, request e-cars from your car partnership, partner up with the local public transport provider and involve your local politicians.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Technical

An extensive guide to making a new creation keeping sustainability principles in mind from the very conceptualisation of the show can be found here: Theatre Green Book (beta version)

  • Artist

Calculate the power consumption of your production to increase awareness of the footprint of touring the show.
FocusTrack lets you import your show file to calculate the power consumption needed to run the show in a specific venue, or to calculate an estimation. (14-day free demo version, £45-300 depending on your package afterwards)

  • Artist

Work together with venues to achieve environmental ambitions: include green demands in your tech rider and share resources.
Here is a sample green tech rider that you can look at for inspiration.

  • High communicative impact
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Collaborate with the receiving venue(s) pre-travel to avoid bringing material and equipment that is available on-site .

  • Low-cost implementation
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Consider how often costumes need to be washed, and opt for machine-washing over dry-cleaning.

  • Artist

Where possible, design lighting rigs based on the smallest equipment list of the receiving houses to avoid hiring & touring unnecessary kit.

  • Artist

Consider how to reduce material requirements and volumes for touring so as to minimise the numbers of vehicles required and weight of material to be moved. Flat-packing items reduces the numbers of vehicles needed.

  • Artist

Investigate if equipment and set materials can be rented locally instead of freighted.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Transport & freight

Collaborate with the receiving venue(s) pre-travel to avoid bringing material and equipment that is available on-site .

  • Low-cost implementation
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Where possible, design lighting rigs based on the smallest equipment list of the receiving houses to avoid hiring & touring unnecessary kit.

  • Artist

Consider how to reduce material requirements and volumes for touring so as to minimise the numbers of vehicles required and weight of material to be moved. Flat-packing items reduces the numbers of vehicles needed.

  • Artist

Tour routing and logistics: think about smart tour itineraries (linear routing instead of zigzagging). Programming networks can share international works (and decrease their costs for travel and transport this way). Instead of travelling back home after a booking, compare whether it would be more CO2-efficient to stay over between bookings.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Rail and road are the most climate-friendly modes of travel and transport within Europe. For intercontinental, sea freight is preferred. Budget enough time and money to allow for potentially slower transport times in between bookings.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Request parking space near the venue’s loading dock, so additional trips between parking and venue can be avoided.

  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Low-cost implementation

Replace high carbon energy sources with low or zero-carbon sources: Investigate the use of alternative fuels for tour and freight vehicles. However, be careful about where the fuel is sourced from - some context on the complexity of biofuels can be found here.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Investigate if equipment and set materials can be recycled at the final destination of the tour instead of needing be brought back home.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Track all vehicles mileage associated with the production and consider an off-setting strategy.
✧ Julie’s Bicycle has a helpful webinar on carbon offsetting here
Green Mobility lets you compare emissions from travel between different modes of transport (car, plane, rail, etc) (in German)

  • Tour booker or producer
  • High environmental impact 
  • Artist

Investigate if equipment and set materials can be rented locally instead of freighted.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Use vehicles that are electrically powered or hybrid, and employ drivers with fuel-efficient driving training. if not available, ask your freight or car rental company what efforts they are making to make their fleet more sustainable.
✧ Look out for the “Blue Angel” logo, which is an independently awarded certification that marks products that are environmentally friendlier than others serving the same use. More info here.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Travel (artists, producers, and presenters)

Support cast, crew and staff to access productions using rail and public transport, budgeting for time and cost of tickets as necessary.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • High environmental impact 

While travelling for work, make use of the local public transport system instead of taxis or private cars.

  • Low-cost implementation
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Explore co-curatorship: put together a programming team that is based in different regions and can thereby limit travel distances to see work live.

  • High environmental impact 

Programmers to travel less and smarter. Eliminate non-essential flying (such as e.g. for meetings) or set a no-fly rule for when the alternative road or rail travel time is less than eight (or six, or ten! up to you) hours.
Green Mobility lets you compare emissions from travel between different modes of transport (car, plane, rail, etc) (in German)

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Tour routing and logistics: think about smart tour itineraries (linear routing instead of zigzagging). Programming networks can share international works (and decrease their costs for travel and transport this way). Instead of travelling back home after a booking, compare whether it would be more CO2-efficient to stay over between bookings.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Rail and road are the most climate-friendly modes of travel and transport within Europe. For intercontinental, sea freight is preferred. Budget enough time and money to allow for potentially slower transport times in between bookings.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Track all personnel travel associated with the production/organisation to understand where your impact lies, and consider an off-setting strategy
✧ Julie’s Bicycle has a helpful webinar on carbon offsetting here
Green Mobility lets you compare emissions from travel between different modes of transport (car, plane, rail, etc) (in German)
Atmosfair offers a detailed calculator for your flights, all over the world

  • Low-cost implementation
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Avoid planes where possible: in addition to CO2 emissions, flights also have secondary effects from high altitude and have non-CO2 emissions (e.g. water vapour, nitrogen oxides); Where flying cannot be avoided, consider developing an offset-strategy.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist

Replace high carbon energy sources with low or zero-carbon sources: Investigate the use of alternative fuels for tour and freight vehicles. However, be careful about where the fuel is sourced from - some context on the complexity of biofuels can be found here.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

When flying, fly economy with as few changes as possible. Business class produces 50% more emissions per passenger for short-haul flights, and a whopping 4 times more for long-haul. Additionally, an aircraft produces the most emissions during take-off and landing, so itineraries with fewer layovers are preferred. (source: JB 2011 Green Mobility Guide)

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

When using rental cars, consider one where the car can be dropped off at the next destination rather than having to be driven back to the original location.

  • Tour booker or producer
  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Travel (audiences)

Integrate a carpool service/forum on the venue's or festival’s website.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • High communicative impact

Connect and collaborate with your suppliers: switch to a green energy provider for the venue/building, request e-cars from your car partnership, partner up with the local public transport provider and involve your local politicians.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Offer safe and plenty bike parking space at venue and advertise it on your website, tickets and marketing materials.

  • High environmental impact 
  • High communicative impact
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Opt to perform in cities/urban areas with good public transportation

  • High environmental impact 
  • Tour booker or producer
  • Artist

Include cost for public transportation in ticket price and allow for early admission.

  • High environmental impact 
  • High communicative impact
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Ask audiences to use public transportation and carpooling. Actively promote these options on the venue website, tickets and marketing materials.

  • High communicative impact
  • High environmental impact 
  • Low-cost implementation
  • Presenter, programmer, curator

Collaborate with local public transportation companies to provide more options at the start and end time of shows. Alternatively, or additionally: Adjust performance times to public transport time tables.

  • Presenter, programmer, curator
  • High environmental impact 

Waste management

Develop a disposal plan for your scenography and costumes for when the production finishes its touring.

  • High environmental impact 
  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Invest in reusable containers and durable travel & flight cases to bring on tour with you.

  • Artist
  • Tour booker or producer

Partner up with organisations (either at home, or in the city of the performance) that can repurpose, upcycle or recycle the set materials. This can be a municipal (containerpark?) company but also amateur theatre companies, creative workspaces, artist studios or social projects