Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums Wins Green Apple Award

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) has won a Green Apple Award in a national campaign to find Britain’s greenest companies, councils and communities. More than 500 nominations were received in the Green Apple Awards for Environmental Best Practice and TWAM will be presented with their trophy and certificate for the Make Carbon History initiative at a ceremony in November to be held in The Houses of Parliament, London. The Make Carbon History initiative supports museums across the North East to achieve a greater level of environmental sustainability. Beginning in January 2013, the project initially involved 8 museums, with a further 7 coming on board in 2014, who are committed to working together to reduce their combined carbon footprint by 12% by 2015. All the participating museums have received expert advice from WRM Ltd, who have assisted each museum to identify and implement practical solutions to minimise their carbon emissions through reduced energy demand and sustainable facility management. Iain Watson, Director of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, said: “It is fantastic that our work with regional museums on the Make Carbon History initiative has been recognised. This is the third award associated with the project and is testament to the strength of the Museum Development Programme in the region and the excellent partner working between North East museums.” The initiative is part of the wider Museum Development Programme in the region which is led by TWAM and funded by the Arts Council. The funding allows the project to be delivered over two years and provides comparable data and time to support museums through the implementation. Not only are museums realising significant reductions in energy costs and carbon, they are also using this project support to enhance their visitor experience, improve conservation, develop new links into local networks and reconnect with their buildings. The project has already had a number of successes with Killhope Museum achieving gold at the North East Tourism Awards 2013 and bronze at the 2014 VisitEngland Awards in the Sustainable Tourism category and Woodhorn Museum achieving a gold Green Business Award.