Check out the recent article in Finance & Commerce, May 18, 2012 by Drew Kerr! Here's an excerpt:
Conference will focus on green practices for theaters
When Brave New Workshop leaders decided to move from their longtime Uptown home to downtown Minneapolis last year, they saw an opportunity not just to buy a bigger space but also to create a greener one.
They replaced more than 90 percent of the lights in the former Hennepin Stages building with light-emitting diodes, which can use up to 75 percent less energy than traditional incandescent lights. The same high-efficiency lighting went into the theater’s marquee, said Elena Imaretska, vice president of product development, partnerships and sustainability for the comedy troupe.
The theater also built a partnership with St. Paul-based Eureka Recycling so that all but a fraction of the waste is recycled. And Brave New Workshop, a nonprofit theater focused on satire and comedy, works with caterers who compost food scraps and use glassware in lieu of disposable cups at its shows.
Brave New Workshop’s actions are part of an effort to make the Twin Cities one of the greenest theater communities in the world, said Leah Cooper, executive director of the Minnesota Theater Alliance.
To that end, the alliance is sponsoring a first-of-its-kind Sustainability in Theater conference April 30 and May 1 at the Brave New Workshop at 824 Hennepin Ave. The conference will highlight effective strategies and look at case studies from other theater communities that have already made inroads.
“Right now, we’re just trying to get people to think in different terms,” said Cooper, who became involved with the issues in a previous role as an environmental consultant.
Read the entire article at http://finance-commerce.com/2012/04/conference-will-focus-on-green-practices-for-theaters/