• Overview 

    • A Green Team is a group of employees engaged in advancing sustainability within an organisation. In the case of smaller organisations, a single Green Ambassador can take on the role.
    • Establishing a Green Team or appointing a Green Ambassador will increase employee engagement with environmental challenges and create a strong culture of sustainability in the workplace. 
    • This is a key step in standardising and normalising environmental considerations at all stages of decision making. Successes might not always happen straight away, but by carving out a specialist team, organisations will be building a culture of climate impact awareness.
    • Your organisation’s Green Team leader or Green Ambassador should be the registered contact for your GCC membership account.

     

     

  • Starting a Green Team

    Depending on the scale, complexity and structure of your organisation, the shape and size of your Green Team will vary. Below are some key things to consider.

    • Green Teams should have input from all parts of the organisation, including individuals who hold key decision-making powers. This may include: a Registrar, Technician, Curator, Gallery/Studio/Facilities Manager, Financial Director, HR, Director.

    • Based on the structure of your organisation, it's worth considering how this team will feed into senior management and/or board level decision making.

    • Consider how your green team communicates with the wider organisation, and how does the wider organisation, in turn, feed into the green team. This could involve quarterly internal newsletters, or open ‘drop-in’ meetings to encourage those outside of the team to get involved.

     

     

  • Green Team Responsibilities

    We recommend that Green Teams:

    1. Establish a regular meeting time. Ideally, at least once a month.

    2. Assign a representative to be the GCC point contact. This person will be responsible for receiving and disseminating communications from GCC across the team.

    3. Complete a baseline carbon report. This can be done using GCC’s free carbon calculator or by hiring a freelance consultant or advisory agency to conduct a full carbon audit. It is important to retrospectively calculate emissions for a baseline year in order to set a for 50% CO2e reduction target for 2030. We recommend starting with 2019, or 2022.

    4. Review and set targets. Once your carbon report is complete, share the results amongst colleagues and together discuss the impact of different activities and agree on the appropriate steps to reach your target. 

    5. Take action. If you aren’t sure where to start, work through GCC’s list of Effective Actions.

    6. Develop a longer term strategy. We recommend that members build a bespoke Decarbosition Action Plan.

    7. Set targets. Review them regularly.

     

     

  • Embedding a culture of environmental responsibility

    Having a Green Team dedicated to identifying challenges and making changes across an organisation won’t solve every problem. Sustainability requires that everyone becomes involved, so embedding a culture of environmental responsibility beyond your Green Team is crucial. Below are some ideas on how to make sure that environmental considerations aren’t siloed within a single team:

     

    • Consider how you communicate with the wider team. Could a quarterly internal bulletin work as a way of keeping your organisation up to date with improvements and changes? Be sure to share success stories!
    • Could you consider appointing an environmental voice to the board, to ensure that the planet is considered at every key decision-making moment? 
    • Include environmental responsibility criteria on all job descriptions, e.g. ‘demonstrable commitment to environmental sustainability’.

    • Consider how your commitment to sustainability is shared with new employees. Could sustainability training be integrated into the onboarding process? This could be as simple as a 30 minute sit down with the Green Team leader to share your organisation's environmental goals, targets, and values.

     

     

  • Training and education

     

     

    Sometimes, artworkers don’t feel ‘qualified’ to speak about climate-related issues within their organisations. We’ve found that some members feel more confident after undertaking training in this area, such as Carbon Literacy training.

     

    GCC recommends that organisations seek relevant training and encourages members to take part in Carbon Literacy training or equivalent to help build a level of confidence across the team. However - don’t let this delay you from taking action. Sourcing funds for, and setting up organisation-wide training should not act as a delaying tactic. Rember, we are all learning, and you don’t need to be a climate expert to take effective climate action!