The Theatre Green Book is a theatre initiative which sets standards and provides guidance for making productions sustainably, making theatre buildings sustainable, and improving operations like catering and front of house, with an overall goal to help organisations reach Net Zero by 2030.
"The Theatre Green Book, and its practical toolkit, has become central to our way of working at the RSC. It encourages us to think and act differently - and urgently - as we play our part in finding solutions to the climate emergency."
Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey
As Version 2 launches (June 2024), we are helping and continue to assist in the development of the Green Book series, and are committed to implementing the standards across the RSC by participating as a trialing organisation.
Version 2
The new edition of the Theatre Green Book brings together the three volumes Production, Operations and Buildings in one place, with tools that make it easier to track an entire organisation's emissions and help them reach their sustainability goals.
Theatres can also self-certify through each rung of their transition to Net Zero by 2030, including – Preliminary (newly added for this edition), Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.
We are on track to reach Basic standard by the end of 2024, with ambitions to reach higher in 2025 and beyond.
What we’re doing
Our production teams are working hard to seek ways to make our shows more environmentally sustainable; to use less, reuse more and source materials sustainably.
Examples of how we are working to these standards include:
1. Introducing modular design and storage to increase set and scenery reuse for later productions, including:
Matilda The Musical has had one set, which has been used for 10 years since it’s been in the West End, with a few minor adjustments.
My Neighbour Totoro’s floor from the Barbican is being flipped onto the other side and cut into a new pattern and refurbished for use on our outdoor Holloway Garden Theatre, (opens in summer 2024).
We reused the cube from our 2023 production of Julius Caesar for the walls of the classroom of Pulitzer winning drama English, 2024.
The ornate metal gates used for The Magician’s Elephant (2021) were adapted for use in Richard III (2022)
The floor from The Winter's Tale (2021) formed part of the set for All's Well That Ends Well (2022)
2. Retaining stage props in the Prop Store after a show has ended, where they can be reused in future productions or hired out.
Almost every show reuses at least one item from a previous show, including:
The magic carpet from A Christmas Carol (2022), which was used for the lift of our 2024 five-star show – A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2024).
3. Committing to using sustainably sourced materials with low or negative carbon footprints wherever possible, and working with suppliers to improve the sustainability of our supply chain.
Our props team were given the challenge to create foliage for Much Ado About Nothing (2022), that achieved the Afrofuturistic look created by the designer. We didn’t want to buy raw plastic materials so instead retrieved a box of old records from our Prop Store and manipulated them with heat into flower shapes.
Plastic bottles were also collected to create garlands for Much Ado About Nothing (2022). The bottles were cut up, manipulated, painted and hung for the wedding scene.
4. Reducing the use of harmful materials by avoiding polystyrene, and moving to water based paints and recycled paints.