Voice Festival Brechin Environmental & Fair Trade Policy

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Scope

This policy applies to all Voice Festival Brechin colleagues, associates, agency colleague and third parties who undertake activity for, and on behalf of, Voice Festival Brechin. It applies to the goods and services we procure, our direct operations and the services we provide to our audiences. 

Purpose

To provide an effective framework for realising our commitment to protecting, and where possible enhancing, the environment by reducing the festival’s environmental impacts, preventing pollution, mitigating and adapting to climate change and a low carbon future. To help provide a fair deal for food and clothing producers in the global south as well as closer to home.

Responsibilities 

Colleagues who procure goods and services should follow Voice Festival Procurement Policy including the requirement to include social value considerations which include environmental issues and fair trade. 

Policy 

Voice Festival Brechin  is run by Voicefest CIC, a Community Interest Company that works in partnership with others to enable personal growth, create opportunities and improve the lives of residents and local communities. The company delivers activities across the performing arts and we recognise that these can impact the environment in several ways, principally through:

• Energy – including the heating, lighting and electricity we use in the buildings we occupy and when working from home.

• Travel – emissions from our business-related travel.

• Waste – including catering waste, use of recyclable materials and avoiding over-provision.  

• Disposal of information communication technology hardware (ICT) – we have an obligation to ensure safe and secure recycling of IT assets and their data in accordance with relevant regulations.

• Procurement decisions which include Fair Trade as well as environmental principles 

• Reducing the risk of emergencies such as fire through the correct use of and storage of equipment plus waste collection and disposal. 

In recognising Voice Festival Brechin’s desire to have the lowest environmental impact, we have set a target to be Net Zero by 2035. The following actions will be taken to support this ambition, as well as its commitment to protecting the environment and continually improving its environmental performance by:

• Ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation and standards, and the expectations of our audiences, supporters and other key stakeholders.

• Ensuring our systems and procedures prevent waste and pollution.

• Ensuring our suppliers are able and are encouraged to support our environmental commitments.

• Ensuring we continually review how we can make improvements to our environmental performance.

Specifically, in terms of environmental issues we will:

• Reduce energy consumption through awareness and improved controls.

• Reduce travel miles through better journey planning and use of public transport including encouraging audiences and participants to use public transport and operators of electric buses.

• Use local business for the likes of printing, local shops for equipment etc as far as practical.

• Reduce paper consumption.

• Rationalise our use of IT hardware and ensure that all waste electrical & electronic equipment is reused or recycled where possible

• Reduce the amount of waste produced by considering purchasing decisions, and whether items can be reused or recycled, before sending to waste facilities.

• Utilise recycling facilities available to recycle paper, plastic bottles, cans, batteries, waste electrical items and other waste streams.

• Work with our suppliers to understand their environmental impact and support them to reduce.

In terms of Fair Trade we are proud to be supported by  Scotmid Co-operative, and will:

• Where Fairtrade Certified or Fair Trade Certified food and drink products are available we will endeavour to source these; including hot and cold beverages, wine, snack and other food to be served at events.
• Choose locally produced food and drink products where Fairtrade/ Fair Trade equivalent is not available. 
• Choose Fairtrade Certified cotton uniform/ team clothing where possible.
• Source any merchandise from Fair Trade/ Fairtrade sources, or local suppliers where possible. 

To realise our environmental objectives Voice Festival both recognises the need for, and is committed to, communicating our environmental commitments and performance to our performers, audiences, suppliers and wider stakeholders.  

This policy and the actions arising from it will be regularly reviewed as part of the planning process, which involves input from our leadership team.

Voicefest CIC August 2025