Our Sustainability Journey
As a society, we have to find ways to be ‘green’; to be environmentally considerate, to secure our planet for future generations. We all, individually and collectively, have to take action in whatever way we can and at the Corn Exchange we are no exception.
There have been a number of positive changes in recent years, and we have recently renewed our responsibility to try and understand better the impact our changes have, to prioritise ideas that support our progress in being green, to continue to identify funding that can enable us to make better sustainable decisions and upgrades to our ageing historic building, and to celebrate staff learning and shifting culture.
Our action extends to not only our internal working practices, but also who we choose to work with, expectations on our visitors, how we create work and plan our activities and our programming choices.
We believe that all of the changes we adopt will make a difference, and we ask our Environmental Action Group, made up of staff from across our organisation, to help us and hold us accountable.
We welcome you to join us in these efforts!
In Our Buildings
Here is a list of just a few of the changes we've made to the Corn Exchange Newbury as well as our offices.
- 95% of lighting in the Corn Exchange building has now been changed to LEDS, including the working lights in our auditorium.
- We have fitted sensor lights where possible within the Corn Exchange, so they only come on when movement is detected.
- We have changed our goodie bags for our pantomime to make them plastic free.
- The toilet roll and paper towels used in the Corn Exchanged is recycled. We also actively avoid using paper towels where possible and encourage the use of hand dryers.
- A small but mighty change has been removing under-desk bins to improve waste sorting and reduce plastic bin bag use.
- The time schedules have been changed for the hot water in the Corn Exchange so it's not heating hot water all the time, this has reduced the amount of time water is being heated in our building by 30%.
- Several years ago when we changed from traditional constant flow taps to electronic sensor taps. This efficiency resulted in a 70% reduction of water usage, which in turn also means less water heating.
- We have installed solar panels on the roof of the Corn Exchange.
In Our Café Bar
We've also been making changes within our Café Bar to reduce wastage.
• We use recycled napkins now in our Café Bar, we also avoid using plastic straws, but have paper straws for those who would like them.
• In 2023 we launched our Classic Sweet Shoppe, which is plastic free and stocked with a variety of drinks and snacks.
• We chose Marshfield as our ice cream supplier as they have an impressive impact statement. They are also plastic free and organic which is a big plus in reducing our carbon footprint!
• At the start of 2025 we launched our profile on Too Good to Go, which means our cakes and savoury options are saved from becoming food waste and can now be bought at a reduced price when they are coming to the end of their best before.
Staff Training
Being sustainable doesn't just mean in our actions but also in educating our staff.
In 2024 we collaborated with Indigo and took part in their Act Green survey. This involved us reaching out to our audiences to learn more about their attitudes towards the climate emergency and the role of cultural organisations in tackling it. One of the main pieces of feedback was about cultural organisations sharing more about their green efforts, the good and the bad, so we have begun doing just that both within our team and to our audiences via our social media and website.
Two of our staff members are now fully carbon literate, following Carbon Literacy training, and several more members have attended multiple seminars run by The Carbon Literacy Project. This is something we would like to get more of our staff accredited with in the future.
In Our Marketing
We're conscious of how much of an impact marketing can have on the environments, so these are some of the steps we've taken so far to reduce our impact.
• We use a green host, Servd Hosting, for our website.
• Our web developer, Kindera, use an energy supplier where its electricity is sourced from 100% renewable energy.
• We have drastically reduced the amount of print marketing materials that we request from companies to reduce wastage.
• We installed digital screens around the Corn Exchange in 2022, reducing the need for as many posters as well as the need to print show information for each performance.
In Our Programming
We also want to make sure we're sharing sustainable stories with our audiences, here's some of the work we've done so far.
Since 2023 we have actively taken part in The Great Big Green Week. This has included sharing environmental facts on our social media, hosting our (now annual) Sustainability Fair, screening environmentally themed films, creating a space for environmental conversations and inviting experts on various areas into our building to chat with local people.
We also make sure to program shows and films about sustainable topics throughout the year, not just during The Great Big Green Week. Some examples of shows include, Blue Ghost, TRASH! and Doug Allan: It's a Wrap.
Then in our cinema, appealing to a range of audiences and ages, we've screened Ocean with David Attenborough (PG), Flow (U), Wilding (PG), Six inches of Soil (PG), Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (U), Bee Movie (U), I Am Greta (12A), I Could Never Go Vegan (12A) and many more.
We are proud to have been awarded the Bronze Plastic Free Newbury Award! The award is with Plastic Free Communities whose mission is to tackle the usage surrounding single-use plastics.
As part of the Award, one of the main requirements to be considered for the award was to prove that we’d removed at least three single-use plastic items from our venue. This led to the launch of our Plastic Free Sweet Shoppe, the purchase of an ice machine to eliminate the need to buy bags of ice, and switching our teabags to Clipper Tea.
We are currently working towards our Silver Award, which we hope to be awarded soon.
