The City of Turku has an ambitious goal to be carbon neutral by 2029. The city-owned Turku City Theatre wants to contribute to this goal and the customers have already been interested in the environmental impact of their actions. To measure the impact of different choices, the carbon footprint must be known. Turku City Theatre decided to determine its carbon footprint of 2022 in cooperation with OpenCO2net. The carbon footprint calculation included Scopes 1, 2 and 3, and followed the GHG Protocol standard. 

Calculating the carbon footprint starts with the collection of initial data 

Collecting the initial data was the most laborious phase of the Turku City Theatre's carbon footprint project.  

"We received good help from the OpenCO2net team to collect the data. In the end, we ended up submitting the purchase invoice data to OpenCO2net, from where the data was collected into OpenCO2.net for calculating", says Veera Westerlund, Sales and Marketing Manager of Turku City Theatre. 

The carbon footprint is concrete data, and it will be easy to monitor its development in the future, says Arto Valkama, Managing Director of Turku City Theatre. According to Valkama, the major elements of the overall picture are now clear. "As a result of the carbon footprint calculation, we realized that we need to request emissions data from the suppliers, for example in relation to restaurant operations, and possibly select only those operators who are able to provide the data." 

So, what was surprising in the calculation? "What was surprising was that the customers’ travel to theatre did not play a major role, and the role of the costumes as an emission source was also surprisingly small," says Valkama. 

To Enable emission reductions, you have to start with the carbon footprint calculation 

The next step for Turku City Theatre is to carefully review its potential emission reductions and communicate the results of the calculation to stakeholders. Carbon footprint information is primarily a tool for developing our own operations, and in addition to that we want to communicate this topic openly to our customers. 

"Our priority is to make emission reductions ourselves. Interaction with suppliers and customers, for example, is essential, and cooperation is the key to achieving the targets," says Westerlund. 

According to Westerlund, the carbon footprint calculation gave her confidence that one's own actions matter. "The biggest sources of emissions in the calculation were those that we can influence ourselves. This knowledge encourages us to make better choices for the climate in the future, and climate actions no longer feels like a big and impossible project." 

Turku City Theatre has nothing but good to say about the OpenCO2net team. According to Westerlund, the collaboration was easy and straightforward. The different steps along the way were well managed and the format of the source data delivery was also flexible, which eased the workload of Turku City Theatre in collecting the data. 

"The expertise of the OpenCO2net team became clear in the calculation project. I got the feeling that they really know what they are talking about, and we learned a lot about carbon footprint calculation along the way," says Valkama. 

Turku City Theatre plans to continue monitoring its carbon footprint, and the plan is to calculate the carbon footprint every two years, for example. 

 OpenCO2net provides companies with tools and assistance to determine the carbon footprints of both companies and products. When calculating the carbon footprint of a company, we follow the GHG Protocol standard, and the calculation takes into account Scopes 1, 2 and 3. In all projects, we use OpenCO2.net calculators and its extensive emissions database. Once a company's first carbon footprint has been calculated by a consultant, our tools will provide the opportunity to carry out the calculation independently as the company's understanding of the main sources of emissions increases during the first calculation project. 

Picture: Turku City Theatre / Otto-Ville Väätäinen