BANGKOK 1899 | CREATIVE MIGRATION
Climate Impact Report
image credit: Aruzhan Shalabayeva, Jingzhi Dou
Eco Workshop with Refugee Youth at Bangkok 1899
to commemorate World Environment Day & World Refugee DayIntroduction
This event, titled an Eco-Workshop, took place on June 5th 2022, dedicated to World Environment Day and World Refugee Day that is organized on June 20th. The goal of this event is to provide access to and promote the environmentally sustainable practices of upcycling and recycling among refugee youth.
Overall, 27 refugee children and 4 adults from Pakistan attended the event, and 15 Thai youth volunteered to help us and our partners. All of them have enjoyed our two workshops:
Plastic recycling, organized by Precious Plastic Bangkok - the participants created necklaces, bracelets and other accessories by putting together colorful beads made of recycled plastic.
Tie-dye masks creation with indigo dye, organized by Na Cafe at Bangkok 1899 and the SATI Foundation, showcasing the ease of upcycling cloth masks.
The below report will detail our use of energy for this event, as well as the amount of waste generated. Since this event is focused on environmental awareness and climate action, we aimed for the overall amount of emissions and waste to be net-negative!
Creative Migration and Bangkok 1899 will use this case study in order to put together a comprehensive climate policy, outlining it for all future events. We want to commit to net-zero and net-negative carbon emissions, working towards environmentally sustainable and regenerative practices.
About us:
Creative Migration is a women-of-color-led, international arts organization based in Los Angeles and Bangkok. Our mission is to bring together cultural and climate diplomacy with a special focus on collaborative community building through intersectional practices. Our programming is defined through three primary strands: Artist Residencies & Creative Hubs, Site-specific Installations and Transmedia Projects.
Creative Migration was founded in 2005 by our Executive Director Susannah Tantemsapya in California. She expanded operations to Thailand in 2018 to open our largest project to date, Bangkok 1899, a cultural & civic hub established through funding from The Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Motor Company Fund. Since 2011, our nonprofit has employed environmentally regenerative practices throughout our projects and day-to-day operations.
Our historic location, Ban Chao Phraya Thammasakmontri, originally built in 1899, was designed by Italian architect Mario Tamagno. His most famous work includes Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, Neilson Hays Library and Bangkok Railway Station (Hua Lamphong). For the very first time, this landmark is open to the public. Our goal is for Bangkok 1899 to be a light-hearted atmosphere where everyone feels welcome. The open space encourages individuals to pursue the lost art of leisure, unburdened by consumerism. Our hope is that the public can come together, experience art, have discussions and discover new avenues of creativity.
Carbon Emissions
Transport 0.06 tCO2e
The participants traveled from these locations to Bangkok 1899 and back:
2 cars from the US Embassy - 7 km x 2 = 14 km
1 car each from the following locations:
Ding Daeng - 7.2 km
Paracha (Suk Sawat) 75 - 13.7 km
Paracha 69 - 14.9 km
Pet Kasem - 23 km
LamLuka - 48 km
Sukhumvit 101/1 - 21.5 km
Ramkhemhueng - 15 km
Bearing - 26.2 km
Assuming that fuel use was universally equal, adding these distances up and multiplying them by 2 to account for the trip back brings us to 367 km traveled by all attendants.
On Site Energy 0.0059 tCO2e
For the part of the event that recycled plastic, Precious Plastic Bangkok used two machines:
Shredder machine - 2.30 kwh for 3.5 hours = 1.877 kgCO2e
Injection machine - 2.50 kwh for 3.5 hours = 2.04 kgCO2e
For the comfort of the attendants, 3 fans were installed at the premises, each consuming 0.0425 kWh of energy for 3.5 hours, which comes down to 0.099 kgCO2e.
The building of Na Cafe was powered for 5 hours; we have calculated the total use of electricity by estimation. The entire building uses 1,500 KW a month, and Na Cafe uses 80% of that (1,200 KW.) This is 40 KW per day and 1.6 kwh. Overall carbon emissions are 1.942 kgCO2e.
Overall, the emissions from on-site energy use are at 5.958 kgCO2e, or 0.0059 tCO2e.
Shipping 0 tCO2e
There were no carbon emissions associated with shipping.
Materials Report
Eliminate: waste diverted from landfill
1,000 plastic beads, each 0.75 g, resulting in 750 grams of plastic waste being eliminated.
Since this event hosted an activity in which the participants recycled plastic, we have added a new category which would reflect how much plastic waste would be diverted from the landfill.
Landfill: items sent to a landfill
Rubber bands x100
These rubber bands were used in the tie-dye workshop to tie the upcycled masks together; they were mostly disposed of, although they could have been reused.
Supporting People
The project took the following actions to support people:
Prioritize working with BIPOC, femme-identified, LGBTQ+ owned businesses and individuals
Our primary partners for this event - Na Cafe at Bangkok 1899, SATI Foundation, and Precious Plastic Bangkok - are all led by and/or employ BIPOC, femme-identified, LGBTQ+ individuals.
Prioritize working with cooperatively-owned and local businesses
Our primary partners are local non-profits that prioritize climate action and social impact.
Prioritize working with vendors who support climate action
Precious Plastic Bangkok and Na Cafe both support climate action with their work.
Create spaces free of racism, harassment and other forms of inequity
Creative Migration and Bangkok 1899 are strongly committed to this principle. We, along with our partners, work together to create an inclusive and comfortable space at this event.
Encourage climate-minded thinking within the project team
As this event was in celebration of World Environment Day, the goal of this project was to inspire and encourage climate-minded thinking within the team, as well as among the participants and attendants.
Consider inclusion and needs of local communities in the project
We have specifically targeted the local community of Pakistani refugees to foster inclusion and help refugee youth socialize in an environment that could be perceived as unfamiliar or hostile.
Collective Action
The project took the following actions to promote collective action:
Share a Climate Impact Report at artistscommit.com.
Share what was learned in the Report to audiences.
Ask project partners and collaborators about their climate policies, commitments, or priorities.
Learn from what other projects have done, connect with other institutions or artists to ask for advice, acknowledge them in your report.
Reach out to other organizations or local networks doing this kind of work: Art to Acres
Propose others do a Report at the same time.
Be available to advise or support other artists or presenting partners who want to do a climate impact report for the first time.
Make sure all artists you work with know that the Climate Impact Reports is an available tool.
Use the report to refine future practices. Share those new practices internally, with your artists, or with your audiences.
Additional Notes/Closing Thoughts
The fact that there was so little waste overall is very encouraging; however, we will aspire to track waste more diligently, as well as reuse as much waste as possible, since the rubber bands used for tie-dying masks could have been very easily collected from participants and reused in the future.
We have also noticed that a certain amount of water was used in the tie-dying workshop; we will make sure to include our calculations of this amount in our next report, as water conservation is an important topic in climate-conscious action.
Overall, we believe that this event was very successful and managed to have an overall positive impact, with a negative amount of waste registered and little carbon emissions, most of them associated with travel by car. The fact that all participants have gained new knowledge about the value of recycling and upcycling, as well as were made aware of the World Environment Day, is also a contributing factor to the success of this event.
We will proceed to share this report with our primary partners, as well as publicize it, in order to encourage our collaborators and audiences to commit to measuring their climate impact.
Credits:
Aruzhan Shalabayeva (intern), Debra Scacco, Susannah Tantemsapya