Opinion with Vamos Theatre

Yes, we recycle in the office, but is that really enough?’ This was the conversation in a Vamos Theatre company meeting last summer during the planning for our 2020 UK tour. Vamos Theatre is the UK's leading mask theatre company performing nationwide and delivering 100s of workshops to schools, colleges and universities every year. With the climate emergency upon us we have been making inroads into thinking and acting greener.

So, what has changed? Firstly, we have set up our own tree grove in the Scottish Highlands to help offset the carbon emissions from our current UK tour of our new production Dead Good. Working with conservation charity Trees for Life, the trees will help to rewild the Caledonian Forest, a rich habitat found only in the Scottish Highlands. This grove will include saplings from locally collected seeds including Scots pine willow, birch, hazel and alder. This isn't a quick solution; we are fully aware trees take up to 20 years to mature, but this is a positive springboard for us – we have to start somewhere.

Other shifts included: printing all our flyers, posters and programmes on recycled paper and with vegetable-based ink; checking and reducing the amount of wasted printed materials. We have ditched plastic branded pens for cloth bags and recyclable badges on the merchandise table. The sanitary towels that we use to pad the masks (trade secret) are now plastic free; the wipes used for cleaning masks in workshops are 100% paper and flushable. The rehearsal room has become a non-single use plastic zone, and the laminator for signage has stayed in the cupboard. It is also about working together, so, we are asking all venues to work with us to monitor and reduce our environmental impact together.

These are tiny changes in the grand scale of things, but we are collectively thinking, acting and working on more long-term sustainability for the company and how we continue to reduce our environmental footprint on this precious world.