Sustainability

What does it mean to organise an interdisciplinary and international festival of the arts in industrial monuments in the Ruhr region? What impact do we actually have on the climate? We've invested our energy in determining an actual state in order to obtain a concrete, data-based starting point and to generate fact-based knowledge from which we can derive appropriate measures: We're part of the Action Network Sustainability in Culture and Media and have participated in the network's pilot project, funded by the E.ON Foundation, and prepared our first climate footprint. Because collecting the data is a time-consuming business, we still defined our system boundaries very narrowly in the first year and limited ourselves to the festival period. We're aware that the resulting findings aren't particularly representative, because they don't include important upstream and downstream processes: A considerable amount of travelling, the production of stage sets etc. naturally takes place outside the festival period. For us, this experience was nevertheless an important and instructive starting footprint, which will enable us to extend the data collection period to the entire year 2022.

The first findings of the carbon footprint show us that the Ruhrtriennale's biggest sources of emissions are in the areas of energy and mobility. What we need to do now is to address these and assess our options for influencing them.

The structure of the Ruhrtriennale naturally demands a high degree of mobility from the staff, the artists and our audiences. We try to meet this demand as much as possible through various incentives and awareness-raising strategies.

- We're gradually restructuring our vehicle fleet to include electric vehicles and are expanding the charging infrastructure in front of our office building. At the same time, we're dependent on the charging infrastructure of our partners. We're holding talks with relevant stakeholders in order to implement this conversion in the long term.

- The transports between the office building, the warehouse and the various venues require operational (and spontaneous) cars and vans. E-vehicles, in combination with the lack of infrastructure and long charging cycles, don't (yet) meet this requirement. That's why we can only use e-vehicles to a limited extent during the festival.

- We invest a lot of time in planning our travels as sustainably and consciously as possible and we prioritise using trains.

- We carefully consider which air travel is unavoidable. Due to the pandemic, we had to do many viewings digitally, which taught us the limits but also the possibilities of this kind of first impression.

- We take advantage of the opportunity to choose ecologically sustainable forms of travel rather than just economic ones.

- We try to use public transport for our commutes within the Ruhr region. However, public transport often doesn't get us to our destination quickly enough or at all. In these situations, we switch to (e-)vehicles.

- Visitors can use public transport in the entire VRR area with the Ruhrtriennale KombiTicket.

- Shuttle services to venues with poor public transport connections should make it easier to get there using local transport.

- We evaluate the mobility behaviour of our audience. This serves as a basis for us to develop measures to improve their use of public transport.

- Both staff and the public can offer and search for carpools through our website.

The energy consumption in our halls is measured according to the technical requirements (lighting, sound and other requirements). It differs depending on the stage events and is directly proportional to the size or the basic technical equipment of the halls.

- In 2021, we were able to cover more than 80% of the electricity demand for the entire festival with green electricity.

- Three out of seven venues already use green electricity, and we're in talks with the rest of the venues about this.

- Our office building already uses 100% green electricity.

- The photovoltaic system on the roof of Kultur Ruhr GmbH produces green electricity that's fed into the public grid.

We've already been able to include sustainability criteria in our procurement guidelines. This provides us with much more responsible procurement procedures. We implement concrete sustainability criteria in our procurement processes in this way as much as we can.

- We rent most of the technical equipment and stage equipment.

- We look for sustainable standards and certifications for new purchases and production.

- The team's merchandise and workwear are GOTS-certified. That's just one of the steps we've taken here. In addition, old products from past festivals are upcycled for the production of merchandise, such as making bags from old banners.

- We've reduced the print run of our publications and print mainly on recycled paper.

- Our festival catalogue and the programme overview are produced climate neutrally and using environmentally friendly inks.

- We make programme information available to the audience on site using QR codes. In cases where we can't dispense with leaflets for communication reasons, we use thin recycled paper.

The halls of the industrial monuments are rented temporarily. Since the conversion of the former industrial sites in the region is a major sustainability project for the region as a whole, we're in constant dialogue with the owners about their sustainability measures:

- How can we best work together?

- What can we learn from our partners and where can we mediate?

The office building is designed with the future in mind and is operated according to environmental guidelines. We try to make our everyday office life as sustainable as possible and include the entire team in this.

- We want to anchor sustainability in the organisation, which is why we've created the Sustainability Working Group and a position for sustainability management.

- Employees are trained to integrate sustainability criteria into procurement processes in a targeted manner.

- We reduce paper consumption in the office through digitalised work processes and prefer certified recycled paper for all necessary printing.

- LED lighting and motion detectors in the building lead to lower electricity consumption.

- Almost all workplace printers have been replaced by central multifunction printers.

Our goal is to create an attractive and simultaneously sustainable service for premiere receptions, artist:inside catering and above all in the festival centre, the Pappelwaldkantine.

- We deliberately avoid meat in our catering; the menu consists exclusively of vegetarian and vegan dishes using local produce.

- We exclusively use reusable tableware.

- We don't hand out disposable water bottles, but only reusable PET bottles that we purchase from regional retailers. The return rate here is around 80%.

Reducing and avoiding waste are major concerns for us. We strive to monitor potential recycling processes and waste volumes. To this end, we're in constant contact with the respective waste management companies.

- We ensure separate waste collection and disposal.

- We use only reusable plastic bottles instead of disposable ones so we can reduce our waste and plastic consumption.

- We collect all data on waste quantities and types as part of our carbon footprint.

So far, we've hardly communicated our sustainability efforts. We believe it makes sense to openly communicate both small and large steps, as well as the opportunities and challenges that go hand in hand with this issue. At the moment, though, we're still investing most of our energy in the analysis and development of measures. We'll be communicating more here, as we go along.

- We inform our audience about environmentally friendly travel options through our communication channels.

- We continuously survey our audience and staff on the topic of sustainability so that we can develop more ideas for steps we can take.

- We want to communicate our sustainability measures here on an ongoing basis.