Carbon neutral organisation
In response to the environmental crisis, Divine Company has committed to being a carbon neutral organisation, reducing emissions wherever possible and offsetting the rest via Gold Standard schemes. Costumes are sourced and created responsibly (see below), and we donate £10 to Client Earth for every new costume created (a total of £340 has been donated to date). We travel light and have developed an extensive network of artists so we can cast locally. We use public transport, car share, and travel by trains rather than flying whenever possible. Our office utilities are supplied by top rated green energy supplier Ecotricity.
Offsetting
Carbon offsetting is controversial; it’s open to greenwashing, and the quality of the schemes varies enormously. However, we feel that alongside developing sustainable work practices, offsetting can be a constructive response to the crisis. Carbon offsetting usually covers scope 1 and 2 emissions; essentially office utilities, company vehicles, and travel booked by the company. In our case, this covers running the office, travel of company employees and transport we book for artists. It would not cover all other artist travel (often arranged by themselves, clients or agents). Artist travel is the main part of our carbon footprint, we feel it would be unethical not to include it. So, we add voluntary offsets to cover this activity. Artists are tasked with recording all of their travel (trains, planes and auto-mobiles) so we can calculate our total emissions. Artists have been hugely supportive of the initiative, which we are grateful for and encouraged by.
Chosen schemes
2020-22 were rolled together because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The period included a number of long haul flights for us, our emissions jumping to 101 tonnes of C02. We have supported a Biomass Power Project in Chhattisgarh, India. See our audit and offset certification.
2019-20 is the first year we have full travel data from our artists, our total emissions were just under 24 tonnes of C02. Artists voted to support a wind power project in Andhra Pradesh, India. See our audit and offset certification.
In 2018-19 we supported a landfill gas recovery and utilisation project in Turkey. As we didn’t have artist travel data we elected to offset double the emissions from our first audit which included only scope 1 and 2 emissions, a total of 14 tonnes. See our audit and offset certification.
Sustainable costumes
Costume production (textiles and so on) is not included in the offset calculations because we do not manufacture the elements; trying to track the entire journey of a material element is realistically impossible. We focus on sourcing sustainably instead. All new work is produced as sustainably as possible. We:
Reuse, and recycle costume elements when possible
Seek out sustainable, environmentally benign or beneficial materials
Create costumes which are as light as possible and pack down to a minimal size for more efficient transportation
Care for all costumes and equipment to a high standard so that waste is minimised
Join us
We hope that others across the events industry will join us in working more sustainably. If you would like more information about making the change (as a company or individual) please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We acknowledge that there is much more to learn and are happy to receive feedback or suggestions.