Environmental practices in 2023 of organizations and businesses in the arts, heritage, and entertainment in Canada
Environmental practices in 2023 of organizations and businesses in the arts, heritage, and entertainment in Canada
Very few have a written environmental policy or measure their footprint
In addition to a summary of environmental practices in 2023, today’s post examines organizations’ plans to implement new practices over the next year as well as barriers in implementing environmentally friendly practices. Next week, I’ll present similar statistics by province.
The post is an update to my 2022 analysis of environmental practices by arts, heritage, and entertainment organizations and businesses (with at least one employee). You might also be interested in a more broad-based post that I wrote earlier in 2022 about the linkages between the arts and the environment.
Thankfully, Statistics Canada has revised the survey this year by separating one previous question into two parts: one for practices currently in place and another for practices planned for the next 12 months. The previous wording allowed a lot of leeway, asking about practices that organizations either had implemented or were pursuing.
Given the change, the 2023 data are not comparable to the 2022 results. (Not surprisingly, fewer organizations have implemented specific actions than had implemented or were planning them.) The survey questions are listed at the end of this post.
The upshot of my analysis is the same as in 2022: Most arts, heritage, and entertainment organizations and businesses are engaged in some type of environmental practice, but very few have a written policy or measure their footprint.
“Arts, heritage, and entertainment” is a broad and imperfect approximation of the arts and culture sector. This classification (which the survey refers to as “arts, entertainment, and recreation”) includes performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries; heritage institutions; as well as amusement, gambling, and recreation industries. Given the sample size, separate data for culture-specific organizations and businesses are not available. So we are left with the compromise of this broad category that also includes entertainment and recreation related businesses such as amusement parks, casinos, bingo halls, golf courses, ski hills, marinas, and fitness centres.