Burnham-On-Sea’s Princess Theatre is taking great strides in improving its green credentials and has this week been presented with a local environmental award.
Sam Nicol, Theatre Manager, has been working closely with Litter Free Coast and Sea Somerset to change many of its working practices in order to reduce harmful effects on the environment.
The theatre has changed much of the packaging used in its café, switched to environmentally friendly cleaning products, and is more careful with its waste disposal and checking what goes down the sinks and drains.
The staff at the theatre, in Princess Street, have worked through all three levels of Burnham’s Business Award Scheme and on Thursday (January 10th), Tanya Cox from Litter Free Coast and Sea Somerset presented certificates for each level to Sam and the town’s Mayor, Cllr Bill Hancock.
Sam told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “We are thrilled to receive these awards in recognition of the real changes that we have put in place at the Princess. We have a great location in town where we can showcase a host of environmental initiatives which other businesses could also put in place easily. Our latest venture is to support the new Walkers crisps scheme.”
“We now provide a collection point for empty crisp packets. Anyone with an empty crisp packet from any company can bring it in to the collection point. We will then send off batches of empty crisp packets to Walkers who recycle them and they give us a financial contribution to donate to a charity; we hand this on to Litter Free Coast & Sea Somerset to support their work. This means that the crisp packets don’t end up on the beaches or in landfill, and we help an important local charity.”
It comes as Burnham and Highbridge Town Council, which owns and manages the theatre, promotes several Plastic Free initiatives across the towns.
Last year, The Princess introduced reusable cups to avoid using single use plastic cups, as well as joining the national Refill scheme in order to make it easy for residents and visitors to Burnham-On-Sea to refill water bottles easily and cheaply.
Town Clerk Tatiana Cant added: “The improvements at The Princess fit in well with the Town Council’s commitment to the Green Charter which we have recently adopted. The Princess is also one of the businesses included in our application to Surfers Against Sewage for our towns to become a Plastic Free Community.”
Other businesses which have already completed all three levels of the Business Award Scheme are the Round Tower Guest House on the Esplanade, High Street greengrocers Gardiner-Whites, as well as the Town Council offices in Jaycroft Road.
