AWAD’S ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT

Our commitment to Environmental Sustainability

AWAD is a global network dedicated to supporting women and women-identifying gallerists to thrive in their businesses. We are committed to reducing the environmental impact of AWAD’s operations and to increasing environmental awareness among our members and partners. 

AWAD has a small core team, and the environmental impact of our operations is modest, however we take responsibility for reducing our environmental footprint, and more importantly, for acting as an agent of change through our network of member galleries, commercial and cultural partners and beyond.

Climate Change

AWAD joined the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) in January 2023 and is proud to be part of the international community of arts organisations working to reduce our sector’s environmental impacts. 

We strongly believe in the power of partnership to bring positive change. We will support members’ efforts to reduce their environmental footprint by providing access to practical advice through resources on our website and via our programme of talks and events. We also encourage our members to consider joining the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) and to review the GCC’s best practice guidelines on key issues such as travel, shipping, energy (including NFTs), packaging and offsetting.

Our commercial and cultural partners also have a valuable part to play and we will work closely with them to highlight better ways of doing business. Indeed, some are already taking action to tackle the climate crisis, for example, Convelio offers sustainable shipping options and Hallett Independent provides advice on insuring against climate-related risks.

For the future, AWAD will work towards the Active membership level of the GCC by calculating our carbon emissions and developing an action plan to cut emissions and waste. 

Materials and Waste

AWAD operates largely online, and so does not produce much physical waste. However, we will follow the GCC’s guidance that we should aim to minimise the number of new electronic devices we buy and keep them as long as possible. This should make a measurable difference to our carbon footprint and minimise the amount of electrical waste we generate. 

We recognise that packaging and use of materials is an important issue for our member galleries and we will provide access to advice, good practice and case studies on how to reduce, reuse and recycle these.

Personal Action

We also encourage the AWAD team and our Members to consider what personal action they can take, such as the United Nations’ ten actions to tackle climate change.

Green Team

Our Green Team is composed of our CEO and Founder, Susan J Mumford and our Membership & Partnership Manager, Diana Wilkins. They will lead the AWAD team’s efforts to reduce AWAD’s contribution to climate change, to minimise its use of materials and to cut waste as outlined in this statement. Comments and ideas are welcome and can be sent to [email protected]