Environmental sustainability

Assessing the environmental impact of your building and operations can not only help you meet organisational commitments to sustainability, but can also reduce running costs and increase efficiency.

The following resources may be helpful:

  • Digital Services and carbon emissions in the heritage sector: some preliminary findings (first published and last edited in August 2023): Examines the carbon footprint of off-site digital services used by The National Archives, considering this footprint in the context of overall emissions for large heritage organisations. Also includes some recommendations for archives when assessing the carbon footprint of their own cloud storage services.
  • BREEAM: the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method for sustainable building design, construction and operation
  • Council for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) Sustainable Places: provides useful resources for designing and running sustainable buildings including landscaping, transport, energy and water use, and waste management
  • Heritage Lottery Fund: Planning greener heritage projects, 2009: for anyone with a heritage project involving capital or conservation work, it outlines the environmental impacts that are likely to be important on different sized and types of projects
  • Museums Association: Helping museums go green project, 2011: case studies, resources and discussions.