Environmental Sustainability: 2024 in Action

Find out about changes we've made to work towards lowering our environmental impact.

It’s been two years since we first launched our Environmental Sustainability Framework and became a Carbon Measured organisation.

We’ve continued to work with sustainability consultants, Eight Versa to accurately calculate the carbon footprint of the museum in 2024, and plan to achieve our sustainability goals in the future. These are:

Minimise the environmental impact of our activities.
Communicate effectively about our environmental responsibility.

What changed in 2024?

Compared to our 2019 baseline:

Our total emissions reduced by 190.31 tCO₂e
Scope 1 (gas) emissions reduced by 39.87 tCO₂e
Scope 2 (electricity) emissions reduced by 96.19 tCO₂e
Scope 3 (purchased goods and services) emissions reduced by 54.25 tCO₂e

Scope 3 is typically the most challenging area to make reductions, so it is great to see that we’ve made progress here.

We are approximately 130 tCO₂e ahead of our target for 2024 (850 tCO₂e) – based on our carbon reduction plan. We’ll produce an annual carbon footprint report for 2025, so we can stay Carbon Measured and continue to work on reducing our impact every year.

The Postal Museum’s total Carbon Footprint for 2024 was equivalent to 150 homes’ electricity use for one year – 27 homes less than in 2019!

Highlights:

Our Sustainability Working Group members took part in Carbon Literacy Training. This training had attendees from every museum department, so that we can continue to support colleagues to take more steps to reducing our environmental impact.
We’ve been working with suppliers to upcycle single use plastics to create unique and attractive gifts, supporting small businesses and reducing waste. We’ve revised our packaging designs with updated recycling instructions to help our customers dispose of waste responsibly. We’ve increased the number of wooden products in our children’s range to reduce the number of plastic toys in our shop.
Since launching the framework, many of our family craft activities have used recycled packaging and materials. We’re continuing to run these activities, with visitors being inspired to also play using recycled materials at home!
We’re continuing to use solar panels for electricity, with 100% of the energy our panels produce going back into running the museum.
We were able to significantly reduce our power and energy usage by adjusting timings on automatic lighting in the museum and replacing electrical office equipment in 2024 with more energy efficient versions. We’ve also worked to sustainably dispose of old equipment.
Our Schools and Learning team have built relationships with local groups and charities, so we can donate usable items instead of throwing them away.
We’re reducing orders of printed paper materials across the organisation, including for marketing flyers and posters.
We worked with Lima Studios on an environmentally conscious approach to creating our newest temporary exhibition, Voices of Resistance: Slavery and Post in the Caribbean. This approach involved making 100% use of the infrastructure from the previous exhibition, utilising energy-efficient lighting and technology, minimising waste and using sustainable, low-impact materials.