It didn’t exactly come as a surprise to hear the announcement from Berkeley-based Aurora Theatre Company that they’d just been certified “Green” by the Bay Area Green Business Program. After all, Berkeley as a city is fond of championing ecotopian ideals including an in-progress pilot solar-panel financing program (Berkeley First) to on-campus energy efficiency and recycling programs to a stated goal to reduce municipal emissions by 80% by 2050. Plus, just under two years ago, fellow Berkeley-based theatre troupe The Shotgun Players went solar, a move which balanced the outlay (happily financed primarily through donations, grants, and tax rebates) with a $10,000 annual saving in energy costs (a boon to any struggling arts association).

Qualifying for green business meant that Aurora had to work hard to staunch the usual flow of theatre patron and energy inefficiency waste by setting up in-house compost and recycling systems, replacing all emergency lights with LEDs, and restricting water flow in the bathrooms. Biodegradable cleaning supplies, green construction materials, and recycled paper products are also being utilized over conventional ones. Since focus on greening the economy has been primarily on corporations, city-planning, and green-collar jobs, it’s great to see the arts getting into the act, especially performance venues, which are rarely the most energy-efficient workspaces. After all, where there’s a stage, there’s always lighting, audio, and construction involved, and where there’s an audience there’s paper waste, food scraps, water use, and climate control needs. But as Shotgun Players and Aurora are proving, shifting towards sustainability in the Arts is not at all an impossible proposition.

It’s not just performance venues that are donning the green—but outdoor Bay Area festivals small and large such as San Francisco’s Outside Lands (solar and biodiesel-powered generators, compostable cups and collection, cell phone recycling) and the Bicycle Music Festival (with pedal-powered stages and transportation) are also showing that low environmental-impact entertainment is not out of the question—even for committed urbanites. And because it might be some time before the Bay Area’s green arts craze sweeps the rest of the nation, think about ways to shrink your own impact it the next time you take in a show, and please, at the very least, recycle your program.