On Monday 9 March, the AB received 3 stars from minister Céline Fremault as a part of the “ecodynamic enterprise” program. AB is the first cultural organisation within the Province of Brussels to receive 3 stars as official recognition for good environmental practice. AB has already had this recognized since 2002 but this is the first time that we receive a 3 star rating.
Why did AB recieve those 3 stars?
The numbers tell the tale: we began with a thorough study of our ecological footprint. A concert hall like AB uses quite a lot of energy for lighting, sound and heating. That energy use was optimised via a computer-operated central management system, with which we are able to only heat or cool the spaces that are actually being used, for example. We also act in many other ways to limit our energy use: one feature is a software system to plan light shows with the computer, so that we no longer need to do so with the actual lighting in the hall. All added up, we have succeeded in reducing our energy use over the past years by at least 15%.
AB has also managed to drastically reduce the amount of rubbish we produce: everyone is familiar with our re-usable cups but did you know that AB's communications mainly take place digitally too, and that we produce increasingly fewer posters & flyers, thus using much less paper?
We encourage our visitors to leave the car at home and come to AB by means of public transport or by bike. In doing so we have managed to reduce use of the car from 72% to 60%. Visitors can see the departure times of trains and metro on screens in the AB, in real time. Every AB concert ticket is also a ticket for transportation on the MIVB network.
We even go further: all cleaning products in the AB are biodegradable and the food in our restaurant is largely organic and in season.
We try to involve our employees as much as possible in all our measures. We are planning a number of further activities in the coming months. On June 6 we organise a big “repair café” in our Agora for the first time.
Repair Cafés are freely accessible gatherings at which neighbours volunteer to help each other out with repairs on all sorts of stuff. This goes from clothing to electrical equipment, furniture and even bicycles and computers. Visitors bring along broken things from at home and, get to work together with the (volunteer) experts, such as electricians, seamstresses, carpenters, ... .
Do you have further questions or suggestions about how we at AB take care of the environment? Then send us a mail at: info@abconcerts.be
