The Edinburgh Festivals are committed to minimising their impact on the environment and continue to work both jointly and independently to achieve this. Our robust sustainability plan details the actions that we will be taking up until 2030 across all our areas of work – Edinburgh Science Festival, Learning, Worldwide and other activities.
Environmental Policy
- Report our UK and Worldwide emissions both separately and together, each year*
- Support our staff to make carbon-conscious choices through initiatives such as providing carbon literacy training
- Carbon Reduction Targets
- Decreasing our office and warehouse (scope 1 & 2) emissions by 75% by 2030, and reaching Net Zero by 2040
- By continuing to use renewable energy suppliers and working with our landlord to find a sustainable heating solution
- Reducing our transport emissions from business travel within the UK and other countries by 70% by 2030 through prioritising low carbon travel methods
- Continuing to prioritise public transport and cycling where possible
- Phasing in rented electric vehicles for our Generation Science tours, and other business travel, as they become available, with the aim of a fully electric rented fleet by 2033
- Reducing our flight miles by 33% by 2030
- Reducing our footprint* from food, materials and freight by 2030
- By identifying a more circular approach to materials use, choosing sustainable food providers, and using sea cargo over air freight
What we do already
Materials
- We design many of our Festival props and display equipment to support re-use of materials. For example, our wooden exhibition display casing has a long lifespan and has already been used 3 times; our Consumed exhibition 2022 used mainly second-hand materials.
- With e-tickets, the festival is paperless where possible. We have reduced the number of programmes that we print, sourcing Fsc approved and recyclable paper for all printed material.
Travel
- We encourage sustainable travel by festival participants and guests – working with Lothian Busses to achieve this
- We promote a hybrid model, reducing commuting carbon by welcoming home-working
- We use shipping rather than air freight where event timelines allow
- We have reduced our flight volume to our international sister festival, the Abu Dhabi Science Festival, by 20%. We will continue to look at ways to reduce air mileage, and commit to offset any unavoidable flight emissions
- We avoid internal flights where a train can get us there in a day and no longer pay for internal flights for our speakers and performers unless it is an accessibility requirement
Operations
- We have already transferred energy supplier for our offices and warehouses to Good Energy, meaning that all the electricity we use is accounted for by renewable generation
- We sort 100% of recyclable waste in our office
Our own climate work
As part of the culture sector, festivals have influence and must therefore lead by example. Edinburgh Science has been programming for the planet for two decades as part of its mission to foster a scientifically-literate society. This programming is for both public and school audiences. Since 2019, we have been taking a proactive approach to engaging with our supporters, other businesses, and politicians through our Climate Co-Lab roundtable events and The NetZeroToolkit. The Climate Co-Lab provides a unique and open discussion forum for senior business leaders, politicians, research stakeholders and charities alike; fostering the generation of ideas and connection between decision-makers striving to bring about sustainable change.
One idea to emerge and develop was The NetZeroToolkit. Delivered by Edinburgh Science, it provides a free and simple 8-component toolkit to help SMEs on their journey to Net Zero. Feedback confirms that the toolkit is an incredibly useful resource as it breaks down carbon management into smaller, actionable goals. We are continuing to expand our outreach of The NetZeroToolkit through building a community of support for users and hosting informative events.
Edinburgh Science is using The NetZeroToolkit as a framework for reducing its own emissions.
*Please note that we do not have data on the CO2e generated from procurement of food and manufacture of materials. As such these are not included in our 2019-20 baseline. However, we understand that retaining materials in order to use less, and following best practice in terms of food sustainability, will be best for the environment so will strive to do this even though we cannot currently measure the impact of it in terms of a tangible CO2e reduction.
Emission Reporting
2019—2020 213,173 Kg CO2e – this will be our baseline by which to measure emissions reductions in consecutive years
2020—2021 59,563.87285 Kg CO2e – this figure is much lower due to Covid-19 preventing many of our activities from going ahead.
(We believe ‘CO2E/Unit of Activity to be a better measure of our emissions reduction progress due to the variation in amounts of events delivered year-on-year. For Generation Science, we will measure CO2/show, and for international work we will measure our emissions against turnover for worldwide work.)
