This week (Monday 1 – Friday 5 September ) is Zero Waste Week, a time when millions of people all around the world commit to reducing their landfill waste for a week during September.

We recognise that what we do today affects the environment for both current and future generations. We want to play our part in protecting the local and global environment, and to continuously improve our sustainability performance across all areas – social, economic, and environmental.

Environmental awareness has long been a factor in our operations here at Birmingham Hippodrome – in 2010, we were proud to become the first UK theatre holding the ISO 14001 accreditation for global standard Environmental Management systems. From 2023 onwards, ‘Sustainable’ has been one of our company values, which are all about who we are, what we believe in, and what sits at the very heart of the Birmingham Hippodrome experience.

As part of our five-year plan to improve our offerings to the city, we’re also committed to continuously improving staff working conditions and investing in long-term emissions lowering through a capital project created with the people of Birmingham in mind – a goal we call Hippodrome Tomorrow. Our Five Year Plan can be viewed here and the  latest Annual Report tracking our progress towards these goals is here.

Did you know we are also taking action in other key areas….

  • Zero to landfill policy: all our unrecyclable waste goes to an energy recovery facility to generate electricity, rather than to landfill

 

  • Our team uniforms are recycled at end of use and made into fibre pellets for renewable energy and insulation

 

  • Reducing our print waste: 87% of our tickets are E-Tickets, which means 530,000 tickets were paperless last year, saving over a tonne of paper, the equivalent of 25 trees

 

  • Ingredients in our Circle Lounge restaurant are sourced locally to support local growers and cut down transport emissions

 

  • Birmingham Royal Ballet’s home in the Hippodrome is partially powered by solar panels