Karys Staddon, Production, Data & Insight Analyst, shares data on how growing our team has made an impact on our operational carbon footprint.

Almost a year ago I started writing my first blog about Orchestras Live’s journey towards better environmental responsibility, spurred on by some shocking stats about the status of the climate crisis and how far off global reduction targets we were. Current projections show maybe 0.1 degrees lower than the research I saw a year ago but remain well above levels set out in the Paris Agreement. With a myriad of weather-related natural disasters across the world in the last year demonstrating the effects of global warming to date, this is not a topic that we can risk putting to one side.

I’m under no illusion that our environmental impact will be a ‘quick fix’ or that we have all the answers, but I strongly feel that we should be doing what we can, where we can, to understand and limit our impact.

Where we started

This time last year, I looked back at trends over several years and clearly saw the impact that homeworking has had on reducing our carbon footprint from an operational perspective. We have been able to keep in touch and work effectively without having to rack up significant mileage through regular travel to office bases and meetings. Now that it has become very much a norm for us, I was interested to see how things compare currently.

Our operational carbon footprint in 23/24

In the last year we have welcomed four fantastic new members to the team, and in the process we have increased the size of our team (FTE staff) by 56%. And of course, we can see the impact of this in our operational carbon footprint:

The most significant change has been our travel emissions, which have increased by 103%. This makes sense given the onboarding period of our three new Community Impact Coordinators who have been – necessarily – out on the road alongside our producers meeting partners and communities, helping to build and deepen these connections in the places where we work. Travel will always be an essential part of our operations, as we aim to reach areas of the country that don’t have orchestral provision, and these can be geographically hard to reach without good public transport links.

The better news is, however, that our intensity value (emissions per FTE staff member) has decreased, so our increase in emissions has not gone beyond the proportionate growth of our team.

What’s next?

We’ve discussed and reflected on these findings together as a team, and our production team will be giving further consideration to their travel choices as we embark on a new financial year, hoping to see these emissions reduce by this time next year.

We’ve also looked at resources on how we can reduce our energy consumption when working from home – if you’re a homeworker too, you might be interested in this article from Uswitch with 104(!) tips on how to reduce energy (and costs) around the house.

Our operational footprint is only part of the picture for Orchestras Live, and we recently launched our digital sustainability pledge for 24/25, building on learning we’ve gathered over the last couple of years.

We are also conscious that there is an environmental impact associated with the projects we produce through our partnerships, and we have committed to learning more about that this year. We’ll be teaming up with partners at King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to pilot a full carbon calculation for our co-produced Life of the Sea project taking place over the summer – watch this space…!