A green museum is a museum that incorporates concepts of sustainability into its operations, programming, and facility. Many green museums use their collections to produce exhibitions, events, classes, and other programming to educate the public about the natural environment. Many, but not all, green museums reside in a building featuring sustainable architecture and technology. Green museums interpret their own sustainable practices and green design to present a model of behavior.
Green museums strive to help people become more conscious of the limitations of their world, and how their actions affect their world. The goal is to create positive change by encouraging people to make sustainable choices in their daily lives. They use their position as community-centered institutions to create a culture of sustainability.
Definitions
Museum
Museums make a "unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the things of this world", according to the American Alliance of Museums’ Code of Ethics. There are many types of museums that specialize in various fields, including anthropology, art, history, natural history, science, and can have living collections such as public aquariums, botanical gardens, nature centers, and zoos, or no collections like planetariums, and children's museums.
Green
The word "green" means environmentally thoughtful practice. The words "green" and "sustainable" are buzzwords often used interchangeably. However, according to Brophy and Wylie, "green" and "sustainable" have distinctly different definitions. "Green refers to products and behaviors that are environmentally benign, [...] while sustainable means practices that rely on renewable or reusable materials and processes that are green or environmentally benign." Another frequently cited definition for "sustainability" that is used in various contexts was developed by the United Nations (1987): "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs."
Sustainability reflects a complex system where components are closely linked and do not exist in isolation from one another. A sustainable system affects and is affected by the individual and collective behaviors of its members. Sustainability, therefore, recognizes the human impact on the environment, and aims to mitigate negative effects.
Culture of sustainability
Green museums aim to promote a culture of sustainability, which can be defined in two parts: culture, which includes the values, practices, beliefs and aspirations of a society. Whilst sustainability asks people to adapt at a cultural level, changing their beliefs and behavior.
Museums are in a unique position to establish and promote a culture of sustainability as they are arenas that simulataneousy preserve and create culture. As a result, museums are now considered to have a key role in shaping a sustainable future. These changes can be achieved through their exhibitions as well as their active engagement in debates surrounding climatic and environmental changes.
Museums have the capacity to influence visitor attitudes toward their local environment that can have a positive impact, for example, on the preservation of local biodiversity. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery joined a global coalition (United for #Biodiversity) to raise awareness about the protection of biodiversity and launched its exhibit Extinction Voices which aimed to highlight the threat of wildlife extinction and gather ideas for collective action. Another aspect of museums role in the culture of sustainability is getting their visitors to engage in climate change and sustainability issues more widely.
History
Discussions within museums about environmental sustainability began in the 1990s and have continued to grow. Green museums are receiving a lot of attention from academia and the mass media. Some scholars believe that a focus on sustainability is a way for museums to be relevant in the 21st century. However, most conventional museums are not engaged in sustainable practices.