Sustainability
During the making and tour of Is That A Bolt In Your Neck we calculated the carbon footprint for the whole project - including in administration, rehearsals and production and the tour.
The project’s final carbon footprint was approx 15.9 tonnes. Of this 78% was from touring (including travel, accommodation and energy used during the show performance), 19% was from rehearsals and production and 3% was administration.
To calculate our footprint, we recorded lots of things over the project. For example:
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miles of train, car, and van journeys
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weight & distance of deliveries and transportation of set, props and costumes during tour
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wattage/length of energy use e.g. time on laptops, length & no. of participants on Zooms and energy used during performances
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items bought first-hand e.g. rehearsal snacks
Using these figures, we then calculated the carbon impact of the project.
To calculate the cost of emails, video calls, mobile phone and laptop use, & purchases such as costume or props bought first hand, we used statistics from 'How Bad Are Bananas?' by Mike Berners-Lee.
To calculate the cost of transport, and accommodation used Julie’s Bicycle Creative Climate Tools ig-tools.com to generate a report.
The energy used for a number of activities had to be estimated. This included energy used during the show as most of the venues were able to measure exactly how much energy was being used during the performance. We therefore estimated the average number of lights along with their wattage we used for each show along with the energy used for the PA system. Although the final figure is only a rough estimate, it does give us some idea of carbon footprint of the actual performance.
