Melbourne Art Fair has claimed the title of “Australasia’s most sustainable art fair”, citing a raft of initiatives for the 2022 edition in February.
The fair has just entered a new carbon offsetting partnership with a goal of offsetting at least 300 tonnes of carbon—equivalent to the carbon captured by 18,000 trees in ten years, according to the fair’s director, Maree Di Pasquale.
The fair will be held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, which Di Pasquale says is a “leading sustainable event destination” committed to reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2030.
Measures undertaken by the convention centre include the transformation of a car park into a “rooftop farm”. It donates excess food to a charity and processes organic waste on-site. According to its website, it captures and uses rainwater, and has reduced its energy consumption by 30% since 2016. The fair, in tandem with the Sydney Contemporary art fair, has also invested in a reusable gallery wall system.
Di Pasquale says Melbourne Art Fair’s partnership with the new Australian company BetaCarbon is “democratising access to the Australian carbon credit market and the security that comes with that, because a lot of the time you just don’t know what these projects are”.
BetaCarbon acquires carbon credit units that are accredited by the Australian Government and is certified and verified by the Clean Energy Regulator. “[This means] we don’t risk investing in some random project that we have no idea would deliver the promised result,” Di Pasquale says.
