Cirque du Soleil
Cirque du Soleil is an international performing arts company from Quebec dedicated to the creation, production and distribution of artistic work, embodying a modern approach to circus and street art performance. Cirque du Soleil tours globally as well as having permanent shows in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Walt Disney World Orlando, Tokyo and Macao. It has come a long way since Cirque founder Guy Laliberté started a band of travelling street and circus performers who embarked on their first tour of Quebec in 1984.
Today Cirque du Soleil still maintains the qualities of traditional touring circus arts in their mission to fulfil their roles as global citizens, building relationships with the local communities they perform in, as well as producing world-renowned work that takes risks and “invokes the imagination, provokes the senses and evokes the emotions of people throughout the world.” The company aims to position itself in the community as an agent of change and environmental sustainability is no exception.
Environmental policy
Cirque du Soleil has had an environmental policy in place since 2006. This environmental commitment engages all divisions and employees, from management to staff and artists, to work towards:
- Reducing water consumption and preventing wastewater contamination;
- Reducing impact on climate change and on air pollution;
- Using, consuming and disposing of materials efficiently by promoting prevention, waste reduction, reuse, recycling and reclamation;
- Ensuring that controlled products are disposed of by organizations that can provide proper handling and disposal;
- Reducing and better management of hazardous substances.
Moving forward on the climate change issue
Each year, Cirque du Soleil conducts an inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for its operations. This involves identifying emission sources, developing a data gathering and emissions calculation tool, and finally, quantifying the emissions.
Based on Cirque du Soleil GHG emissions from the previous year, the organisation creates an annual Carbon Reserve budget to support internal projects that improve environmental performance in relation to the organisation’s carbon footprint. These innovative projects are in addition to the organisation’s regular environmental practices and contribute to reducing direct and indirect GHG emissions from purchased electricity.
Cirque du Soleil Green Committees
The environmental policy facilitates communication on environmental issues among the various departments of the organisation’s big top and arena tours, and shares successful initiatives with the other shows. For each big top tour or arena tour a green committee is formed to ensure that the policy is adhered to and the tour/arena manager selects a committee leader.
For big top tours the green committee meet at least once in every city, and for arena tours the committee meets at least once a month. To share best practices and successes among shows, two or three phone meetings a year will be organized for all committee leaders. Cirque’s Environmental Management Advisor at the International Headquarters in Montreal (IHQ) hosts the committee leaders meetings. Committee members exchange information and share documentation of their environmental practices and useful tools via their in-house SharePoint platform, hosted by the Cirque du Soleil Social Action and Responsibility Department.
Ethical suppliers
Cirque du Soleil sees the need to choose ethical and sustainable suppliers in order to continue greening their operations and in 2008, the company adopted a new procurement policy aiming at standardising practices and providing a clear framework for all procurement decisions. This policy includes a section that sets out responsible procurement principles for suppliers. As Cirque du Soleil has dealings with a growing number of suppliers the procurement policy defines the basic environmental and workers’ rights principles they are expected to follow.
Some examples of how Cirque’s environmental initiatives have worked alongside their shows are below.
KOOZA: reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim
KOOZA toured in North America from 2007 to 2010. During this time, tour members have instituted various environmental initiatives involving the four Rs: reducing, reusing, recycling and reclaiming. Here are a few examples:
- Each day, one of the local employees working on the site is named “Eco-Leader.” This person is in charge of making sure that all staff use the waste collection stations for recycling, composting and garbage correctly.
- The boutique saves necessary plastic protective packaging from merchandise boxes and reuses it to wrap mugs and other fragile items and also in envelopes for mailing products.
- The tour runner uses reusable bags for purchases.
OVO: composting campaigns
Since the beginning of its touring journey in 2009, OVO has recycled food waste from the employee kitchen, the Tapis Rouge catering tent and public food counters in collaboration with external suppliers.
When possible, OVO reaches agreements with partners who use table scraps for specific projects. For example, in Atlanta, employee and customer table scraps were recycled into animal feed by a partner company that also recycles used cooking oil. While modest, these initiatives have established standards for future tours to aim for and created useful contacts across North America.
Quidam: recycling for social change and reusing water
A recycling program instituted on the Brazil leg of the Quidam tour built partnerships with a local organisation in each city the show visited to collect and sort recyclable materials. In Brazil recycling is more than an environmental issue—it is a social issue. The cooperativas (such as Cempre) employ the needy, bringing them into healthy work environments and providing them with educational resources.
Choosing the “cooperativa” method to recycle meant an excellent opportunity for Quidam tour staff to be sensitized not only to the importance of recycling but also to the human aspect of such a social undertaking. To ensure the success of this recycling initiative, champions were appointed for each part of the Quidam site, and information sessions were organised for everyone.
Using water wisely
During the final months of its big top tour, Quidam showed great creativity in reusing water recovered from the condensation of its heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. This recovered water has been used for cleaning since 2009, which has reduced the team’s water consumption. In 2010, the initiative was pushed even further via the acquisition of an improved, state-of-the-art system maximizing the use of recovered water. The recovered water tank was fitted with filters and a pump to ensure water quality and constant pressure. These changes allowed the tank to be connected to washing machines and sanitation facilities in Cirque du Soleil employee areas.
This initiative inspired staff from other Cirque du Soleil tours to develop similar systems. It is important just to keep in mind that certain climatic conditions are more favourable to such a system than others: the amount of water condensation is contingent on the weather, geography and time of year.
Alegría: planting trees for Earth Day
While touring Brazil, the young performers and children of performers who were part of the school on Alegría decided to raise funds to plant some trees. They did this by designing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Do Not Disturb Nature” and sold them to tour employees.
Because the site of the Cirque big top in São Paulo was right in the middle of Villa Lobos Park, the students used the same location to plant ten new trees for Earth Day, a lasting memory of the company and its engagement with the locality visited by the tour.
Reusing rainwater and reducing energy consumption at IHQ
In December 2008, a 400,000-litre rainwater collection basin was officially put into operation at Cirque du Soleil’s IHQ in Montreal. The basin holds rainwater throughout summer and winter and as well as supplying water to sanitation facilities it is also used to irrigate the gardens. A year later in 2009, Cirque du Soleil had reused 1,357,000 litres of water. In 2010, the Building Services team connected new equipment to the recovered water system. A total of 3,098,000 litres of water were reused, an increase of 43% over 2009 results.
Other initiatives were implemented to reduce the water consumption such as all 13-litre toilet tanks in the building were replaced by 6-litre tanks or 6-litre/3-litre dual-flush toilets. In the same vein, low-flow urinals and taps were also installed.
The ONE DROP Foundation
Every year an amount equivalent to 1% of Cirque du Soleil earnings is given by the company and its founder to various cultural and social action programs managed by Cirque du Soleil and the ONE DROP Foundation. ONE DROP was founded in 2007 by Guy Laliberté as the result of a personal decision to commit himself to the cause of universal access to water in fulfilment of the Cirque du Soleil dream “to improve the living conditions of all human beings, no matter where they may be.”
ONE DROP in cooperation with Oxfam and others develops access-to-water and sanitation projects in countries where access to water is lacking. The foundation is also involved in raising awareness among individuals and communities on water-related issues, mobilising them to join the campaign for universal access to water and urging them to adopt sound habits for managing this resource for future generations.
