To address a growing need to understand the sustainability credentials of the supply chain and chart scope 3 emissions, a group of cultural sector organisations, led by supplier workshops at the Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO), has created an open access, easy-to-use google-based form that can be sent by any organisation to suppliers. It can be used by outdoor event organisers and their supply chain too, and shared to save time and effort in understanding the environmental impact of supply chains.
In this article, Rachel O’Sullivan, Environmental Manager at The Royal Ballet & Opera, shares the aims and processes of this valuable new resource for the events industry:
“As organisations become more advanced in their sustainability efforts, they are looking at their supply chains to reduce their emissions. This is leading to significant effort on the part of the suppliers to respond to individual surveys, questionnaires and data demands and on the part of the organisations requesting and gathering supplier data.
To address this issue, a group of cultural sector organisations has created an open access, easy-to-use google based form that can be sent by any organisation to any suppliers they work with. We’ve called them ‘suppliers’ but the form can be sent to anyone. The form is completed by the supplier and the organisation can review their credentials.
If the supplier receives further questionnaires from other organisations, they can point to the answers they have already given on the spreadsheet. If an organisation is just starting to review their supply chain and is looking for supplier information, they can check the spreadsheet first to see if the information they need is already available. The aim of this project is to help save everyone time and resource.
This project was started as a result of supplier workshops held by Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO), where it was identified that if everyone was asking the same questions in the same way, it would reduce effort for all parties. RBO, supported by Theatre Green Book, brought together a group of other cultural sector organisations, associations, and suppliers to consult on the form and the questions within it. The form is designed to cover all aspects of environmental sustainability, allowing suppliers to showcase their efforts. It also includes space for examples and stories to minimise bias against smaller companies. There are a number of ‘how to’ films to help people fill in the form and interpret the spreadsheet.
Asking suppliers about sustainability is one of the most effective ways of encouraging action in our supply chains. In order to help suppliers take the next step in becoming more sustainable there is an additional tab of the spreadsheet that aims to highlight some good places to start with each topic. We will also be providing some supporting workshops and resources over the coming months to help suppliers that have completed the form to take action in areas they may be struggling with.
The form and spreadsheet are a collective response to a problem that will increase as more organisations attempt to understand and reduce their scope 3 supplier emissions.
We hope that working together to ask questions in the same way, will help all organisations and suppliers to undertake this work more efficiently and ultimately help suppliers progress towards being more sustainable. Please do encourage your teams to send this to your suppliers so that we can start influencing our supply chains to take action.”
Further information is available from sustainable.suppliers.info@gmail.com
The work has been undertaken in consultation with a range of organisations including Arts Council England, Julie’s Bicycle, Association for Cultural Enterprises, National Theatre, Theatre Green Book, SOLT UK Theatre, the Roman Baths, GLAM Oxford and others. There has been a period of testing with a small group of suppliers to gather feedback.
This resource spotlight originally appeared in our October 2025 Vision for Sustainable Events newsletter. Sign up to receive monthly event sustainability news, case studies and guest blogs direct to your inbox.