top of page
From left to right, there is an organic muslin square printed with different UK garden birds, an organic bamboo nappy features the image of a stork, a white organic longsleeved baby vest and green organic muslin bib and hand knitted baby booties with Bluebird buttons and lace ribbon. Underneath the clothing is a reborn care sheet and blank nursery certificate. All of these items are featured on a teal blue background.

Sustainability

More Accountability, Less Ignorance: Striving for Sustainability as a Reborn Artist

November 2024

​

A 2022 report estimates that the art world as a whole emits approximately 70 million tonnes of CO2 each year. Around 52 million tonnes of this is caused by visitor travel and a further 2 million tonnes of CO2 is emitted by art shipment and business travel.

​

Creating art is my life. It's what gets me out of bed in a morning and makes my mind race with excitement about new ideas last thing at night. However, as my reborn journey has progressed, I noticed this awful guilt growing inside me - my conscience was beginning to ask the difficult questions that I could no longer be ignorant to.

​

Reborn art dolls are produced in vinyl. Amidst the growing pandemic of counterfeit kits, which are illegally mass produced using inferior and potentially harmful materials, I am already committed to ensuring that I source the authentic kits from sculptors directly or their approved reputable dealers. Like many artists worldwide, I use heat set paints and mediums, which involves baking the vinyl doll parts multiple times to cure each of the thin layers of paint and varnish. I've always been conscious about taking steps to reduce the risks to my own health associated with this process but never really explored the possible impact for the environment.

​

These art dolls are, by design, intended to last many, many years; collectors would be devastated and understandably reluctant to part with hundreds and thousands of pounds if they didn't, so I'm certainly not suggesting that the vinyl kits should be substituted for biodegradable alternatives. However, there are definitely other opportunities for positive changes to be made and carbon offsetting projects for what we cannot avoid.

​

There are aspects of the reborn industry that feel very much out of my control - decisions about best practice, ethics, and ecological impact that have to be made by sculptors, manufacturers, suppliers, event organisers, and collectors. Some positive changes I've noticed include my usual suppliers phasing in the use of sustainable, fully recyclable packaging alternatives and couriers, such as DHL and Royal Mail are optimising their delivery routes and introducing more electric vehicles to their fleets. The British Motor Museum, which hosts two Doll & Teddy Fairs per year in May and November, was the first museum to be awarded a Silver Greengage ECOsmart Award in 2021. As of 2024, this venue has been awarded the Gold ECOsmart Award and Silver Green Meetings Award for their sustainable practices.

​

As an artist, I needed to explore what was within my control: What impact on our fragile environment am I personally responsible for? What can I change? My neurospicy brain found itself spiralling and burrowing deeply into this rabbit hole. My autistic mind naturally defaults to the finer details as opposed to the bigger picture, so I found myself teasing apart the online statistics, evaluating how I work, and beginning to think a little differently.

​

It's rather conceited of me to wish for my work to have a lasting impact as I pour my heart and soul into each project. However, I don't want this to be at a detrimental cost for the generations to come after me. Ignorance is not an excuse to avoid my personal responsibility so I think that working sustainably and ethically are just as important as, if not more important than the art itself.

​

Much alike most artists, the largest contributions to my carbon footprint are:

  • Materials;

  • Energy Usage; and

  • Travel & Shipping

​

I've explored these in more detail below, including identifying decisions I'd already made without realising the ecological benefits and importantly, new opportunities for change.

​

Materials

A few months ago, I created an inventory of materials to better monitor my stock levels and attempt to optimise how and when I replenish these. This should hopefully reduce sporadic, smaller shipments as it will allow me to condense my orders into fewer overall shipments from suppliers.

​

Where possible, I'm choosing to purchase from UK suppliers, who have already imported stock into the country in larger quantities, to avoid creating unnecessary additional air freight.

​

I'm also conscious of the choices I'm making about the specific materials I use (brushes, sponges, poly pellets, etc.). This is possibly the most problematic element of my work and I haven't found an easy or immediate solution so, going forward, I'll be prioritising seeking out more sustainable options and reducing single-use products as much as possible.

​

From 2025, ethical and sustainable outfits will be sourced for all custom orders and toddler-child sized Bluebird Nursery art dolls. All other Bluebird Nursery art dolls made for adoption at live events will include:

  • an organic bamboo nappy (which biodegrades in approximately 4 years rather than the 400 years it takes a standard disposable nappy);

  • a gender neutral, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified long sleeved vest;

  • a GOTS certified muslin bib;

  • a GOTS certified muslin "lovey" square; and

  • a pair of beautiful handmade "Bluebird" booties (commissioned from the lovely Pat Thompson as my skills with knitting needles are atrocious!)

​

As my stock of printed materials depletes, I'll be phasing in more recycled card and paper alternatives. For example, I found some beautiful seeded paper "Thank You" cards with envelopes made from recycled materials to send with my UK custom orders. I would have liked to send these to my international clients too but I learned that seeded paper often requires a permit, certification (that it is free from weeds and invasive species), and will often be held in quarantine as it enters certain countries such as Australia. Therefore, I'm currently using a sustainable alternative printed on recycled paper.

​

Energy Usage

All of the electrical equipment at my art desk operates on a smart plug with a fully adjustable timer. This was primarily purchased to assist with my neurospicy tendencies to hyperfocus for hours at a time by restricting my working hours, but the smart plug also ensures that nothing (aside from the plug itself) is unnecessarily switched on or left in standby mode when not in use. The most helpful feature I've found is being able to remotely operate the smart plug from my phone for situations that disrupt my normal routine (e.g. being away from home unexpectedly or when I'm too unwell to be at my desk).

​

I already try to rely on natural daylight as much as possible but any artist in the UK will agree that the British weather is so unpredictable that an artificial light source is necessary. I find that I use my desk lamp most often when painting finer details and rooting hair, but used it most when working on graphite portraiture. When I replaced my lamp in 2021, I chose a model with energy-efficient daylight LEDs which are supposed to provide up to 20,000 hours of light and reduce my energy consumption by 80%.

​

When I attempted to calculate the CO2 emissions from my halogen oven usage, the best estimate I could achieve was between 807.3g and 4843.8g of CO2 per art doll. This was because the number of bakes to cure the paint and mediums per art doll varies by kit size, skintone, additional details added, and the actual emissions vary depending on the fluctuations in energy sources to the National Grid.

​

The most appropriate online calculator I found uses live information from the UK National Grid. At the time I was researching my carbon footprint (October 2024), the calculator estimated emissions of 207g of CO2 per kWh of electricity used.

​

From the information in my halogen oven's manual, I was able to estimate that it uses approximately 3.9kWh of electricity for 180 minutes of total usage. I tried to include the time taken for the oven to reach temperature as well as the actual bake time in this estimation. I then used this as a multiplier according to doll kit size and how the vinyl parts fit into the oven for each bake:

​

1 batch per bake (all vinyl parts can be baked together)

Emissions (207g) x Electricity (1 x 3.9kWh) = 807.3g of CO2

​

3 batches per bake (head, arms together, legs together)

Emissions (207g) x Electricity (3 x 3.9kWh) = 2421.9g of CO2

​

4 batches per bake (head, arms together, legs together, a torso or tummy plate)

Emissions (207g) x Electricity (4 x 3.9kWh) = 3229.2g of CO2

​

5 batches per bake (head, 4x individual limbs)

Emissions (207g) x Electricity (5 x 3.9kWh) = 4036.5g of CO2

​

6 batches per bake (head, 4x individual limbs, a torso or tummy plate)

Emissions (207g) x Electricity (6 x 3.9kWh) = 4843.8g of CO2

​

​

I don't usually make more than 12 art dolls per year. If all 12 were the largest kit size requiring all limbs and a torso to be baked individually, the maxiumum emissions I'd be generating annually from the heat set process would be 58,125.6g of CO2. By choosing to continue to work with heat set paints as opposed to air dry alternatives, I don't think it would be possible to reduce this energy usage but I am committed to ensuring that the equipment I use and how I use it is as energy efficient as possible. I'm also on the greenest energy tariff currently available to me so that 100% of the electricity supplied to the National Grid (equivalent to my usage) comes from community-based renewable energy projects.

​

Digital Presence & Communications

I was initially quite unaware of the environmental impact our digital presence can have. Using an online calculator, I learned that my website has a carbon rating of C. It's running on sustainable energy (which I didn't know) and only 0.34g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits my site. This means that, over a year, my site traffic emits the equivalent amount of carbon that 1 tree can absorb.

​

I also learned that a single email emits an average of 10g of CO2. As I'm already committed to sending no more than 10 emails per year to my website subscribers (mostly because admin takes me away from my art desk), this equates to a maximum of 100g of CO2 per Bluebird subscriber annually.

​

Going forward, I need to evaluate the effectiveness of condensing images I upload and the complexity of my site to try to further improve its carbon rating. I'll also remain committed to sending a maximum of 10 subscriber emails per year. These actions are particularly important because as my site traffic and subscriber numbers increase, so too will the emissions.

​

Travel & Shipping

I exhibit at an average of 5 live events in the UK per year. Meeting collectors, sculptors, and fellow artists in person is important and I feel quite passionately about the benefits of being able to physically interact with my work before choosing to invest in it. That said, I do find these events overwhelming from a sensory perspective and it usually takes me a few days to recover. As much as I thought I would love to exhibit internationally at some point in my career, I don't have any immediate plans to do so and would certainly need to think about the cost/benefit from more than just a financial perspective beforehand.

​

Most of the live events I attend are based in the Midlands, UK, with the exception of Peterborough so my travel is an average of 500 miles by car. Annually, this emits up to 100,000g of CO2 depending on MPG during those journeys. As I can't change my method of travel (e.g. to use public transport instead) for these events, it would cost £1.23 per year to offset this with Sustainable Travel International.

​

I prefer my custom art dolls to be collected from one of the live events I'm already attending whenever possible and offer this option free of charge. I've actually refused to offer shipping until very recently and intend to restrict this to only be available for international customers whenever possible. I wanted to ensure that the choices I made for packaging materials were as eco-friendly as possible without compromising on the safety of my work during transit.

​

Can an individual artist really make a difference to the bigger picture?

I cannot speak to or on behalf of the art industry as a whole. I don't believe that placing responsibility on an intangible label for one sector of the economy is conducive to change unless the individuals of which it comprises are firstly willing and able to identify their affliliation with it and then willing and able to acknowledge and act upon what they are personally responsible for.

 

My journey of discovery into this rabbit hole has definitely highlighted plenty of opportunities for me, as an individual artist, to continue to do what I love in a more sustainably and ethically. Now I'm no longer ignorant, I just need to hold myself accountable.​

​

Commissioned Portraiture: Welcome
bottom of page