A Greener Green Tree Gallery

At the Green Tree Gallery, we are very aware of the environmental and ethical issues that affect businesses in this day and age. As a gallery policy, we try to take all these factors into account in running of the gallery and take advice where deemed appropriate.

Ethical Gallery:

We see it as our responsibility as a Sussex based business to try, wherever possible, to make decisions ethically both on a local and international level.

As we are both Sussex artists ourselves, it is our aim to support local artists as much as possible. Of course there are some exceptions and so our aim is to ensure that at least 80% of our stock is produced by Sussex artists and makers.

Further afield we feel it is important to support Fair Trade producers and have therefore decided to stock a range of Fair Trade products, all coming from recognised Fair Trade Importers. We have chosen products that we feel fit in with our gallery ethos, for example everything is hand made by skilled craftsmen and women and using traditional materials.

Greener Gallery:

We want to make as little ecological impact as possible in the day to day running of the gallery. After all, there’s no better reminder of this than our beautiful surroundings of Borde Hill Garden. Wherever possible we choose the greener option. For example, we use as little paper as possible, preferring to use email and digital transfers wherever we can and we encourage our artists to do the same. Our packaging is almost all recycled or re-used and  even our bubble wrap is bio-degradable! Of course we also recycle as much of our waste as possible.

Most of our equipment and furniture at the gallery is second hand and we use sites such as Freecycle to dispose of unwanted items (and to pick up new ones!).

Energy Use/Carbon Offsetting:

Unfortunately we are not able to choose our own greener energy provider as we are part of the larger estate at Borde Hill. In order to counteract this we have looked into ways of addressing the balance, including the possibility of carbon offsetting. Having done a fair amount of research, we have decided to take the advice from the established Charity, 'Friends of the Earth'. FOTE do not recommend carbon offsetting except as a last resort as they believe it does not encourage people to look for more eco-friendly ways to run their businesses. Instead they recommend making donations to reputable charities who are addressing both environmental and ethical issues, where the money will go directly to projects encouraging climate change.

Therefore, from 2009 onwards, in line with this recommendation, The Green Tree Gallery will make regular donations to both Friends of the Earth and The Woodland Trust on an annual basis in order to offset our carbon usage.

Green Tree Gallery in the community:

As part of our ethical stance we want to help promote arts in the wider community for both adults and children,  and develop links with community organisations. We would be happy to hear from local groups who would like to work with us.