We take our social responsibility seriously and consider social, environmental, cultural and economic factors in everything we do. We recognise that we are living in climate, ecological and social crises, and that we are faced by a huge challenge globally to respond to the IPCC’s ‘code red’ warning and reduce our carbon emissions to limit warming to 1.5°C.
To this end, we want to utilise our unique position at the interface between culture, arts and environmental engagement bringing communities together to actively create better places! Last year we took real advantage of this position and had a busy 2022!
One of the many sustainability events of the year, harking back to the origins of Open Source Arts, was a Kirkstall Riverbank Cleanup. We worked with the Aire Rivers Trust to put together a cleanup of a small section of the River Aire’s banks near Kirkstall Morrisons. Together with members of the local community we collected bags and bags of litter, a couple of shopping trolleys and more!
We also worked to improve our waste disposal processes by introducing a glass recycling system, food waste disposal and better communication. Moreover, we wanted to support local people to recycle so decided to become a Terracycle collection point earlier this year; this has been used by our team and members and the wider community. So far we’ve received a LOT of cheese wrappers to be recycled and diverted from landfill! If you’ve got any cheese wrappers, plastic nets or biscuit and snack wrappers to recycle then come drop them by!
Alongside this we’ve continued to develop our yarden into a small oasis within the surrounding industrial landscape with planters adorned with herbs, perennials and more, thriving green roofs of wildflowers. We’ve been seeing a lot of insects and birds around the space as the yarden provides an invaluable source of food for animals to thrive, helping them live and travel from green space to green space in an otherwise concrete city. We also connected up an irrigation system designed by our fab team which has reduced water use!
The first of the two big projects this year has been ‘The Big Switch’ as we switched all our lighting systems to more cost effective, carbon saving LEDs. This switch has reduced our energy usage, costs and carbon equivalent emissions by 73%. Not only this but we estimate that once they’ve been in for a year we’ll save:
- 5,596 kg of CO2 emissions – equal to driving a small car 17,460 miles – or 3,132 miles more than driving from OSA to Ankara in Turkey and back THREE times!
- £4,700 – enough for 4,680 cans of Kirkstall Brewery IPA!
Next up we have the Net Zero Carbon Roadmap Report, one of the first published by an organisation of our size in Leeds and a rarity among small businesses nationwide. The report provides what we hope is an illustration of why we have committed to becoming Net Zero by 2030, what our carbon footprint is like now, what work we have to do and the beginnings of an ambitious yet realistic pathway to reaching our target.
The report revealed that our annual carbon footprint comes in at just over 18,000 kg CO2e, equivalent to driving the average UK car over 82,000 miles or around the equator just over three times. However, it has been hard to put this into context and compare it with other organisations of a similar size as very few are reporting their emissions. We hope to be able to engage with other organisations to help them develop similar reports too.
To start up the process of developing the collaborative roadmap we held our first ‘Resilient Futures’ workshop aimed at bringing together the knowledge of our team, artist community and Leeds residents to co-produce exciting ideas for action.
We now hope to meet again in the first quarter of this year to reconvene our networks and discuss what we can do next in our journey towards Net Zero Carbon by 2030! If you’re interested in getting involved then please don’t hesitate to get in touch at sam.townson@opensourcearts.co.uk.
2022 was a big year in terms of introducing new projects, schemes and facilities here at Open Source Arts, but we don’t want to stop here. There’s still plenty we can do to reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact as well as supporting local biodiversity. Keep your eyes peeled for what we’ve got coming up for the rest of 2023
