Carbon-auditing our work some years ago we discovered a large chunk of fossil fuels are burned by audiences coming to the show. Since then we publish preferred sustainable transport to our events. It makes a big difference if audience members walk, cycle, bus & lift-share.

We gave up flying in 2004 which said goodbye to all practical possibility of touring the world. However, we later discovered that not all touring is bad! Our ‘Mobile Sorting Office’ for The Last Post was designed to tour to rural villages where we would frequently sell-out our mini auditorium. Instead of 20 cars driving into town to see a show, one extra van pootled into a pub carpark.

The best actors aren’t all in London. The best work doesn’t just happen in London’s glittering West End. Stop fetishising big and start thinking local.

It dawned on us once during rehearsals that the entire team was disappearing each day to get individually wrapped sandwiches and bottled drinks for lunch, and our bin was filled with detritus that would not biodegrade for 1000s of years.

For three weeks of rehearsals on The Last Post, we combined our purchasing power to sit down each day and share a delicious, organic meal cooked from scratch by our multi-talented Stage Manager, Emily!

No waste whatsoever, supporting local businesses, eating low/no food-mile ingredients and introducing high-quality vegetarian food to everyone we were working with. Even better, it was a wonderful, productive time for different parts of the company to come together to relax and chat.

It worked so well that we’ve never looked back. We can’t always manage such grandeur but a packed lunch & something to share is always the Kilter way.

In all our work, both the production team and the creative team spend time in nature on walking-discussions. Not only are knotty problems belittled under the sky they also tend to loosen and unwind.

An hour or two of walking through fields can often progress a project faster than weeks of emails exchanged. Of course it also inspires new ideas.

These are some of the great mantras of the sustainability agenda and the ‘salvaged’ look has frequently become a style-choice for Kilter.

But you don’t have to cut corners to cut carbon. Look at set-exchange.co.uk to source reused set and costume items.

Breed good habits. Save it where you can in rehearsals. Turn off lights and chargers. In performances, we often choose to work outside where possible and close to our audience.

Generate your own energy. In Roots Replanted and The Last Post we used wind turbines and in The Darklings we harnessed energy through a cycle-powered generator.

Not everything you do has to be about the climate emergency but if you are making a contemporary piece of theatre set in the real world, don’t let your characters pretend it isn’t happening.

Within our work we always strive to create an attractive sustainable vision of the future so our audiences know what we should be aiming for and can start to make it happen. When it comes down to it, very few people want to spend longer in their car or worrying about where their food comes from.

Consider your cleaning and printing needs. And biggest of all, your banking. Can you make ethical business choices that support our planet?

Sustainability isn’t just a byword for eco-friendly. Often it’s possible to address several problems at once. Actively seek to work with a diverse workforce. There’s no point building a wall-eye vision of the future that doesn’t suit everyone!

Talk to your team about what works for them. Offer sensible hours that suit your team, and allow for caring responsibilities. Kilter’s rehearsal schedules are often spread over more weeks to limit the working day to school hours. You can be a parent & an actor-vist.