Preserving our planet is the most important challenge of our century and Opera Europa is committed to adapting its working habits to build a more sustainable future.
Opera Europa is part of the SHIFT initiative, a certification established with 15 international cultural networks in partnership with two environmental specialists, Creative Carbon Scotland and Green Leisure Group, which is providing a scheme to improve, measure, monitor and evaluate efforts toward sustainability.
This Green Policy fixes the efforts Opera Europa – its team and collaborating freelancers – are committed to do, to make this change happen.
Green Team
A green team supervises the sustainability work within Opera Europa, composed by :
- Eugenio Giorgetta, Technical Director, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
- Celia Grau, Advocacy Coordinator, Opera Europa
- Cormac Simms, Administrative Director, Royal Opera House
The green team is responsible for writing and updating the Green Policy, implementing the Opera Europa sustainability Action Plan, encourage colleagues from the team, the Board, the membership and partners to work according to the Green Policy, remaining informed about sustainability updates for the cultural sector.
Travels
Opera Europa’s core activity is to gather opera professionals during its conferences and forum meetings to allow best practice exchange, discussions and confrontation within the opera sector, enable partnerships and networking moments. Asking people travel to Opera Europa events is the biggest negative impact Opera Europa produces. It is important to do as much as we can to reduce this impact to a minimum:
- For the Opera Europa team and the Board, by committing to travel as much as possible via less carbon-impacting ways (train, public transport, car sharing etc…) c.f. Travel policy for more details
- By encouraging the membership to also travel sustainably
- By replacing some shorter ‘in presence’ meeting with virtual ones
Events
The event itself has also an important impact, which should to be limited as much as possible.
- By choosing a strategic event destination: the environmental impact of a location will be taken into consideration when choosing an event destination although the accessibility to all members is also very important to OE. Thus, the destination cannot always be extremely central, but should try to follow a balance between North and South, West and East, encouraging regional participation while being in less central locations.
- By submitting Opera Europa’s sustainability recommendations to each event host, who will try to fulfil it as best it they can. C.f. the Opera Europa Event Rider
- By choosing and recommending eco-friendly transportation within the city of the event
- By choosing and recommending eco-labelled accommodation when possible, or accommodation that is accessible by public transport or by foot.
Communication & Awareness raising
Opera Europa will communicate about its sustainability efforts at least twice a year whether to its members and partners as well as internally (to the team and Board)
Through the activity of the Sustainability forum and through the organisation of live or online working sessions, Opera Europa is committed to raising awareness about sustainability throughout its membership and beyond during the whole year.
Office & home office
The main impact of an office is its energy efficiency. Opera Europa is fortunate to have its office at La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels, an opera house that takes sustainability very seriously and is actively reflecting on making the building more energy-efficient. Opera Europa is committed to do anything in its power to help the administration on this issue.
In the office, the team applies the waste separation rules of the building, reduces the printing and avoids to purchase non-reusable plastic disposable (for drinks and food for example).
Most of the time the team works from home, and Opera Europa is encouraging its staff to make sustainable choices also at home.
When coming to the office, the staff is encouraged to use low carbon transportation including coming by foot, bike or public transport.
