Sustainability
Find out how we’re reducing our carbon impact at this time of climate crisis.
The climate crisis is the biggest challenge any of us has faced.
Like any business, our operation has an environmental cost: we create work that is inherently temporary; we make use of raw materials; we ask people to travel to a particular location at a particular time.
We are committed to reducing our carbon impact, and have set ourselves ambitious targets to achieve Net Zero as an organisation by 2030.
Our Environmental Policy recognises our responsibility to take action, and our belief that theatre can also lead positive change. We are committed to leading by improving our practice, shaping public conversation through storytelling, and galvanizing industry action to combat the climate crisis.
In May 2021, we started working towards the baseline standard of the Theatre Green Book – a new guideline for making sustainable theatre, divided into three volumes – Productions, Buildings, and Operations.
We aren’t experts yet, but we will be. Everything we learn along the way will help us change the way we make theatre for good.
Our commitments:
- To embed environmental sustainability at the heart of National Theatre’s practice, to deliver the National Theatre to a net zero carbon position by 2030.
- To work to the standards of the Theatre Green Book.
- To use the best tools and practice to help minimise our carbon impacts.
- To report on our progress annually.
- To encourage education and innovation across all business activity.
- To share our experience and learn from others within the wider sector and by working with peer networks.
Productions
Reuse is at the heart of achieving Theatre Green Book (TGB) Basic Standard, with 50% of materials needing to have had a previous life, and 65% needing to be repurposed at the end.
We are tracking material usage across Scenic Construction, Props and Costume to determine the percentage of material reused on each production, as well as the percentage being repurposed afterwards.
Further to this, we are using our tracking tools to predict material use on each production at early design phase. This new approach aids us in making sustainable decisions on our shows. It’s an enormous team effort, which needs every single person working on a show to rethink what they do. Every decision counts.
From January 2024, all our productions staged on the South Bank will be TGB Basic Standard.
In action
Discover how we’re embedding best practice from the Theatre Green book in our recent productions.
Buildings
We’ve made real progress in making our building much more sustainable – but there’s much more we want to achieve.
Between 2019 and 2024 we have reduced our buildings’ energy emissions by 26%.
Energy
In the last few years we’ve significantly updated our 1970s building to make it more energy efficient. This includes new LED lighting in our auditoriums and foyers and improved monitoring systems which reduce energy use.
Our building now has a B rated Display Energy Certificate – improved from a G a decade ago.
Between 2019 and 2024 we have reduced our buildings’ energy emissions by 26%.
Over the next five years, we will be replacing all remaining fluorescent and incandescent lighting with LED.
Heating
As part of the NT Future redevelopment project in 2013 we constructed a new production building, the Max Rayne Centre, which is heated and cooled by a ground source heat pump.
The pump uses the ambient, below-ground temperature, transferring heat from the ground in winter and back into the ground in summer, via a network of pipes running through twelve 120m deep boreholes.
We are now conducting feasibility studies to look at replacing our remaining gas boilers with heat pump technology.
Water
We can extract up to 120 cubic-metres of water each day from the London aquifer, which reduces our demand on mains water supplies and reduces our carbon impact. This provides us enough to fully meet our demand for non-drinking water.
The Max Rayne Centre also has a rainwater collection tank which supplies water to all toilets in that wing of the building, including the Dorfman Theatre and the Clore Learning Centre.
Biodiversity
We have several hives and a sedum roof on our workshops, from which bees forage and pollinate for up to 3 miles around the concrete jungle of the South Bank. The honey they produce is available in small quantities in our shop.
The beds on our terraces and outside are planted with flowers and greenery that bees will enjoy.
Not only does the sedum roof help to support wildlife habitats, it also improves our drainage system; increases the lifespan of our roof; boosts thermal performance; and acts as a natural carbon sink.
Operations
Organisation
As of 2024, 25% of staff have received Carbon Literacy training, and we are continuing to roll this out to all staff.
We regularly share sustainability knowledge and updates with our staff internally, as well as collaborating with other theatres through external networks such as the Theatre Green Book Committee.
We are founder partners of Lambeth’s Climate Partnership. This partnership was founded in 2022 by organisations with a significant leadership role in Lambeth that represent health, housing, culture, and education and skills sectors.
Waste
We work towards the principles of the waste hierarchy, prioritising reduction and reuse wherever possible.
We recycle over 20 waste streams, including coffee cups, flexible plastics, and textiles.
Currently we recycle 61% of our commercial waste, and 58% of our total waste. Our aim is to reach the Lambeth/GLA 2030 target of 65% recycled waste from 2026/2027.
Food and drink
Across our internal Food & Drink outlets, 65% of menu items are plant-based. Meat in our restaurants is Red Tractor-assured and all fish has a Marine Conservation Society rating of 1-3.
We have banned air freight for all fruit and vegetables, increasing focus on British seasonality.
In our cafes and internal spaces we have introduced Foodsteps carbon labelling, and in our bar, we have eliminated single-use plastic cups in favour of reusables. We have also introduced a 25p discount for bringing your own cup across all cafes.
We work with Olio to redistribute surplus food and avoid food going to waste. In the first 5 months of 2024, we shared 1748 meals with the local community, equating to 3,167kg of CO2 emissions avoided.
At The Understudy, we offer Swell Lager, the world’s first carbon negative beer. It sequesters 57.6kg of C02 per annum per 150K pints sold.
We use Notpla packaging, made from seaweed. This delivers 70% less emissions than plastic alternatives and 64% less than BLA plastic alternatives.
Our Environmental policy
Purpose
We are committed to developing a pathway that will see the National Theatre Net Zero by 2030. We believe we can achieve this and continue to make the very best theatre to inspire generations to come.
Details of the scope, responsibility and our commitments, monitoring and reporting are included in our Environmental Policy (PDF 250KB).