Environmental practices in the arts, heritage, and entertainment in 2024
Few organizations or businesses are committed to net zero emissions or have a written environmental policy
Today’s post examines organizations’ current environmental practices and their plans to implement new practices over the next year. Part of the post is an update to my analyses of environmental practices in the arts, heritage, and entertainment in 2023 and 2022, but I also analyze new data related to organizations’ commitments to carbon neutrality. In two weeks, I’ll present similar statistics by province.
Most arts, heritage, and entertainment organizations and businesses are engaged in some type of environmental practice, but relatively few have committed to carbon neutrality, have a written policy, or measure their footprint.
A few definitions
By “organizations”, this article means not-for-profit organizations or for-profit businesses in the arts, heritage, and entertainment (with at least one employee).
“Arts, heritage, and entertainment” is a broad and imperfect approximation of the arts and culture sector. On the plus side, this classification (which the survey refers to as “arts, entertainment, and recreation”) includes the performing arts, heritage institutions, and other culture-specific organizations and businesses. However, this broad category includes entertainment and recreation related businesses such as amusement parks, casinos, bingo halls, golf courses, ski hills, marinas, and fitness centres, as well as sports organizations and businesses. Separate data for only the culture-specific organizations and businesses are not available.
A separate category is available for organizations and businesses in the “information and cultural industries”. This category, which is not analyzed in this article, includes businesses in film, publishing, and broadcasting, but also many others in telecommunications, web hosting, and related information industries.
The survey questions are listed at the end of this post.
Current environmental practices in the arts, heritage, and entertainment
I’ll start with an analysis of a (new) stand alone question from early 2024 related to commitments to carbon neutrality. (I’m not sure why this question was not included in the same survey as other environmental practices.)
Respondents were asked whether they currently have a commitment to net zero carbon emissions or are considering such a commitment.