By Energy Volunteer Queenie Kung.

Following to the implementation of Arcola Waste Management Strategy, a detailed resource monitoring was carried out, for the period from September 2006 to October 2007, to observe materials intake and energy consumed annually, so as to produce efficient waste reduction schemes.

The monitored areas included: electricity, gas, water, glass, paper and plastics. It was conducted by tracking bills and invoices on the aforementioned areas during that specific period of time, on how much Arcola has consumed and spent.

After consolidating all the raw data collected, a detailed analysis is made as follows:

Among the three areas of waste, paper, glass and plastics, the amount of paper waste produced in Arcola accounted to 72% of the whole sum, which weighed close to 14150kg, while glass and plastics taking up 27% and merely 1% of the sum respectively (as shown in Chart_General). Meanwhile, glass and paper consumption took up to 41.7% and 43.6% of the total expenditure on the monitored areas.

Brochures were the main culprit for the paper waste, which took up to 57% of the sum, followed by printing materials (posters by 15% and flyers by 11%), sanitary waste (napkins, paper towels and toilet rolls by 7%), office A4 paper and plain tickets surprisingly amounted to 4% and 3% as well (as shown in Chart_Paper).

As for glass, it showed an average disposal of 347.52 kg per month. The relatively steep slope for August to September 2007 on the chart for glass consumption suggested a larger amount of glass waste were produced over the summer from our foyer café due to alcohol consumption (as shown in Chart_Glass).

For electricity consumption, it summed up to the level between 2000 to 3000 kw/h from our two meters each month and there is a reasonably larger amount of electricity consumed from November to January due to less daylights. It is noted that there is a 24% increase in electricity charge from June 2007 onwards. Whereas for gas consumption, it varied significantly from December to March and reached up to 9000 units in March, that was possibly due to misread of our three meters or incorrect estimation, which exact reasons cannot be retrieved by now (refer to Chart_Gas&Electricity).

Generating from the findings, recommendations are listed below:

First, there was a huge difficulty to retrieve exact and correct data on electricity, gas, water consumption and waste disposal, since no system was set before to keep track on the bills and no regular check-up of meters were done, which rest it hard to investigate suspicious or missing data and generate a full report. Especially for Arcola’s water consumption, meters were never read before, either by Arcola or the service provider. Arcola has been charged all the time by just an annual lump sum and make it impossible to retrieve data needed on water consumption. It is strongly recommended that meters should be read at least on a weekly basis and bills should be read thoroughly and monitored all the time if energy reduction plans are to be carried out.

Second, paper is the major waste among all in Arcola and seasonal brochures account to over half of the annual paper waste. Given that Arcola has been encouraging e-Newsletter for some time, it would be viable if Arcola actually starts an e-Newsletter campaign and actively cut down its paper consumption on seasonal brochures. Before actually making the drastic change to publishing e-Newsletter, considering the possibility that some of the customers prefer not to use email or give out email address, seasonal brochures which are printed on recycle or thinner paper would be an alternative.

Third, another note for paper waste is on plain tickets. It is surprising that paper waste on tickets amounted to 3% of the sum and 2% of the annual expenditure. This can be drastically reduced if e-ticket or m-ticket (mobile ticket) could be used to substitute paper tickets in the long run. But it is noted that the difficulty to monitor the auditorium and the huge cost incurred to set up the system may be a drag to adopt this alternative for now.

Fourth, plastics are not currently recycled in Hackney and all of the plastics waste went straight to the bin. One possibility is to use degradable plastic bottles in the café and refrain from consuming plastic forks, knives, spoons, plates, etc.

Fifth, the 205kg of paper towels thrown in the bin can be reduced by installing hand dryers and offering clean towels in bathroom for customers.

The ground work is being put in place so that what we do here can be easily replicated elsewhere. Through the slow progress and making mistakes we feel that we can save time for those who follow us on the road to carbon neutral.

From something very simple such as a waste management strategy we considered that waste management really starts from procurement, but procurement in itself warranted an individual strategy.

And simply changing to a green supplier would defeat the purpose of raising awareness of the issue as this would be preaching to the converted, so we decided to write to our own suppliers in order to help them change their own policies on carbon.

And before long we started to have a very solid environmental policy which encompasses water usage, transport, with ideas on how to communicate carbon to the local community. This is a living document which is constantly being improved and updated as we find out more information and can be adopted by others as a starting point.

Before we could start setting ourselves targets to meet, we had to know where we stood at the moment, and so our current waste output and energy consumptions had to be measured in order to demonstrate that we were making a difference. This in itself took quite a while, determining what waste we actually produce and areas that could be improved, processes that could be eliminated or substances that could be substituted so that our carbon footprint is reduced.

The formulation of policies and procedures is not overly exciting to report, nobody reads about the super hero who tackle crimes realistically through council meetings or taking notes in his PACE notebook. However these are basics which need to be done especially if we are to qualify for some of the funding that is available for carbon buildings.

Now that everything has been written down we have started to make so way into actually doing things. We have started off simple as we feel these are cheap quick fixes which other people will be able to copy straight away.

To begin with we have went around the building with a sealant gun and measuring tape, draft proofing the windows and doors so all our heat is not simply going out of the building. A very basic thing to do but the results are quiet noticeable.

After that we dropped a brick into our toilet cisterns. This is to reduce the amount of water used to flush the toilet. Even those on the most fibrous diet do not require a whole cistern of water to dispose of their deposits. In the longer term we aim to run rain water into the toilets to reduce our water consumption but this is our first step.

We asked our suppliers to supply us with their environmental policy and make recommendations on their products which they feel are the most eco – friendly (waiting on them to get back to us on that one). The initial decision was that we would just change suppliers however we felt that this defeated the purpose of raising awareness. By sending out a letter to our current suppliers we would make them aware of the issue and hopefully change their attitude once they were aware that our purchases would be affected by it.

The staff have been fantastic, and if anything are the driving force behind the carbon initiative. They no longer take bottled water from the fridge but use filtered tap water, which saves on the bottles we are sending to the landfill, they have come up with suggestions on other issues we could look at and most importantly their attitude means that appliances are turned off when not in use and appliances are used sensibly.

We have also switched our supplier of bottled water to a company who provide the water in a corn based bottle which decomposes within 80 days when in landfill conditions. This means that although these bottles go into our general waste and are sent to landfill, their impact on the environment is minimal.

We have replaced all of our conventional cleaning equipment with eco friendly detergents, reducing the amount of chemicals we are circulating in the environment. This has also had the happy consequence of reducing our Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Assessment (COSHH) considerably.

We have switched our electricity and heating supply to green tariff’s so our energy sources originate from a green source. In the long term it is our vision to have our electricity supplied by micro generation here at Arcola but for now reduction of electricity consumption and sourcing electricity through a green supplier is a step in the right direction.

One of the more simple measures that we have taken is to buy more coloured bins for the staff and public to sort the waste out. This has been a small but very effective step in reducing what rubbish goes directly into the main bin and reducing what we are sending to landfill.

In the close future we are looking at other issues which we feel we may be able to help reduce the carbon footprint from the theatre. This includes incentives for those that have used public transport to get to the theatre, the development of a food service supplied only with locally produced foods to raise awareness of food air mile and further communication and awareness raising of the issue throughout the whole carbon neutral project.