“Let’s make this World Environment Day count!” That was the takeaway message from the last meeting I had with the Green Team at SRT. Investing in the creation of a Green Team within SRT has turned out to be a crucial step in our environmental efforts.

The team is composed of enthusiastic representatives from all the SRT departments. We meet once a month to ensure our ideas have ownership and relevance. The objective is not to “greenwash” anything, but to see how we can actively make a difference and be environmentally conscious. So it may be a token that we on this World Environment Day have turned our logo green but we hope to inspire you – and ourselves – to think green in more ways than one.

I am consistently encouraged by the conversations and ideas that come up regularly in the  SRT Green Team meetings. One of our latest ventures was to try and source recycled materials for the set and props for our upcoming June production of Lungs. It was quite challenging, given the current restrictions, but we did try at every step to make a more creative, environmentally sound choice.

We are in conversation with an exciting Singaporean company to support the expansion of Asia’s green lung – our mangroves. We will announce this collaboration shortly and hope you will take this important journey with us.  

So why is this important? While we know that human actions have placed our environment in a state of great peril, it is sobering to reflect upon a statistic that I came across recently. According to the UN, every single year, we lose over 4.7 million hectares of forests – an area larger than Denmark, the country of my birth. This mind-blowing number brought home the crisis in a very personal way. So much so, that I would argue that this fact alone makes me think every day needs to be World Environment Day.

#generationrestoration 

The enormity of the situation is discouraging, and yet there is so much we can do as individuals and businesses. Without meaning to be prescriptive, may I share the few points that always hit home for me? You would know them, of course, but it’s worth hearing again, I believe.

1. Educate yourself. Really. The important thing is not to be an alarmist but to know - the admittedly alarming - facts. You can only make changes, and encourage others to make changes, when you are aware of the extent of the problem. I would strongly recommend Bill Gates’ New York Times bestseller ‘How to avoid a Climate Disaster’ as a powerful read. He did warn us about a global pandemic in 2015, but we didn’t listen then.
2. Go plant-based to a larger degree in your daily life. There are so many great alternatives now as a substitute for dairy and meat.
3. Leave the car at home and walk when you can, or take public transport when you can’t.
4. And seriously … do take your own shopping bags/containers when you pick up your groceries/lunch. I guarantee that if you do it twice, it already becomes a habit.

These are simple, small steps – but they do matter. We talk about these personal choices as well, at the Green Team meetings at SRT, even as we try our best to move forward with our green agenda at work. For sure, it’s hard and complicated to always go beyond the basic measures, but we do our best to take this journey. We feel every step towards a more sustainable way of working is a step in the right direction.

Find out more via https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/ and https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/.

This article is contributed by SRT’s Managing Director Charlotte Nors in recognition of World Environment Day 2021.