ArtAML™ environmental sustainability statement

The world is facing a series of linked environmental crises. In October 2022, the UN warned that the world’s governments are not yet on track to keep global heating below 1.5 degrees, and the window for action is rapidly closing. We are already seeing the impacts of existing warming with devastating droughts, storms and ﬂoods across the world. Related crises include collapsing biodiversity, dangerous levels of air pollution, and plastic contamination in our rivers and oceans. Without urgent action from across society, these problems will rapidly escalate.

The art market has an important role to play. Arts organisations – particularly in the Global North – have a disproportionately large impact on the environment, mainly due to a great deal of international travel, arts shipping, and high use of energy and materials. We need to urgently act to reduce these impacts in line with what the science is telling us. The creative industries, including providers like ourselves, have an opportunity to use our public platform and cultural inﬂuence to set a positive example, encouraging and supporting others to take action and helping shift the public debate.

At ArtAML™, our mission is to help businesses build effective AML compliance programmes into their operations to detect and prevent the sector being the target of economic crime and improve its reputation, while building trust between the civil service and art market to result in realistic and enforceable measures. Our core values include accessibility, fairness, professionalism, transparency and trustworthiness.

To fulfil our mission and be true to our values, urgent environmental action must be taken. Art is a powerful communication tool and is vital for communicating issues and solutions alike, as well as bringing people and communities together. The creative economy across the world is directly threatened by the climate crisis, and those from marginalised communities and cultures are most at risk, while also holding many of the most effective solutions to the climate crisis. As a sector provider, contributing to the future health of the planet with our own actions and as an example will help to realise and inspire change, thereby contributing to a future art world that communicates, empowers and unites.

As an organisation, we know that our main direct environmental impacts include secure data storage and backups, ﬂights to art fairs and industry events, and energy use in our buildings.

We have committed to tackling these impacts by:

Joining the Gallery Climate Coalition, with an aim of being an active member.
Regularly calculating the carbon footprint of our operations.

Setting speciﬁc targets for major parts of our footprint, including:

Reducing our building energy use by 30% before 2030.
Using only low or zero emissions vehicles for travel by car, where feasible.

The actions we have taken, or are taking to meet these targets include:

Adhering to our staff travel policies and practices of using public transport where possible, and planning our attendance at international events to reduce the need for air travel.
Carrying out an energy audit of our buildings to ﬁnd opportunities for energy reduction and renewable generation.
For internal 1:1 video calls, turning off the video to reduce data consumption.
Regularly deleting notification emails that do not need to be retained (for example, calendar appointments, project management tasks assigned, etc).
Auditing the code of our platform regularly to look for any extra efficiencies that can be made; as more clients use the platform, we want to ensure we can balance that growth with sustainability.
Using a plugin on the website to reduce media files. (This has already had an impact of reducing their size by 73% thereby reducing the server load.)
Whilst we keep demo and onboarding videos for current clients, we now delete videos from demos if the prospect has clearly said ‘no’ or a period of 3-6 months has passed.
When offboarding clients, we send data to former customers within 30 days of subscription completion instead of retaining it on our secure data storage.
Speaking to our suppliers and service providers about their carbon footprint, and looking for opportunities to encourage them to take action, or to switch to alternative suppliers who will.
Appointing a Green Team Member who will, starting in April 2025, perform a monthly environmental responsibility accountability check with our team during our weekly team stand-up. Updates and progress will be recorded for reporting to GCC once per annum.

We are also setting aside £150 into a Strategic Climate Fund, rather than purchasing carbon offsets. Following guidance from the Gallery Climate Coalition, this money will be spent on measures to accelerate our emissions reductions, and support frontline climate solutions around the world that are making a difference right now. We will report on how we spent this money at the end of each ﬁnancial year.
We aim to take action in line with the principles of climate justice, recognising the connections between the climate crisis and other global injustices. We want our environmental actions to support —rather than undermine or ignore— the needs of people on the frontlines of marginalisation and injustice.

We have set these targets and are taking actions in the knowledge that we aren’t yet doing everything right. We still have a great deal to do and much to learn. We welcome feedback from our network on this environmental statement, our targets, and on our plans for action.

Last updated: 26 March 2025