Kings Place Environmental Sustainability

The Board and team of Kings Place are resolutely committed to actively minimising our impact on the environment and responding to the climate emergency. We aim to be a leader in the cultural sector for environmental practice and we actively promote environmental awareness to our audiences, artists, performers, collaborators and stakeholders. As an organisation and as individuals we are continually looking at how we can further reduce our carbon footprint, energy consumption, the waste we produce and our consumption of one-use plastic.

We are fortunate to reside in a BREEAM certified building that was built with strong environmental principles at its heart. This includes:

• Proximity to one of the largest public transport hubs in Europe, reducing the need for visitors and audiences to use cars
• Secure bicycle parking for all staff
• A displacement ventilation system which cools the building using outside air reducing usage of air conditioning
• High standards of thermal insulation minimising heat loss through the fabric of the building
• Efficient use of energy through good daylight penetration, motion activated lighting and an advanced transition programme to LED lighting throughout the building
• Triple glass wall façade on the south and west aspects, dramatically reducing solar heat gain
• Efficient use of water through low capacity cisterns, flow control in toilets and showers, leak detectors and harvesting of rainwater for irrigation
• A ‘green’ roof with solar panels, and bio-ecology enhancing features including: a bug hotel, bird and bat boxes and plant boxes
• The building is managed by Savills who have achieved ISO14001 accreditation for environmental building management
• A zero to landfill waste management system with a recycling rate of over 75%
• Kings Place uses energy from certified renewable sources

We are very proud of our most recent achievements in sustainable practice which include:

• Converted all our lighting in our largest auditorium, Hall One, to LED lighting, reducing our energy consumption in the room by approximately 90%
• Migrated many of our IT applications to cloud-based platforms reducing our reliance on high energy-consuming servers and server room air-conditioning units
• We have stopped providing artists and performers with bottled water and provide, tap filled, re-usable bottles instead
• We are replacing all one-use plastic cups used at the concert bar with re-usable cups
• We actively ask audience members to bring re-usable water and coffee cups with them when they attend performances through our pre-concert emails and on tickets
• We use pin code activated copier and print machines to minimise paper and toner use
• We do not use under-desk bins, encouraging all staff to make active decisions about how they manage their waste
• We offer e-ticketing for all performances reducing paper, print and postage

We have made substantial progress towards reducing the carbon impact of Kings Place and becoming more sustainable. However, the scale of the crisis means we have to scrutinize, even further, every part of the way we operate and relentlessly strive for continual improvement.

Our mission is to continue to work towards alignment with the Paris Agreement and ultimately to achieve carbon neutrality in the shortest possible timeframe (an organisation achieves net zero carbon emissions by balancing carbon emissions with carbon removal and eliminating carbon altogether).