The Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith has been awarded the highest level three-star Creative Industry Green Certificate for 2014/2015 for the fourth year running.

The first theatre building to achieve the top three-star rating, The Lyric is now the first theatre to maintain its highest level of rating for four years.

The theatre has seen a 35% reduction in energy emissions and 49% reduction in water and wastewater emissions per performance. It also recycled or composted 96% of its site waste in 2014/15.

Executive director of The Lyric Theatre, Sian Alexander, told Getwestlondon : "It's a scheme which is run by an organisation called Julie's Bicycle, which works across the arts and creative industries on environmental sustainability.

"They measure our approach to improving our environmental performance across a number of different areas.

"We take lots of action to make ourselves better in terms of our green performance. It's in our business plan and it's part of our mission, it's embedded into the way that we do business on an everyday basis.

"It's an incredibly positive thing to do for two reasons, one is it means that we are using the money and the resources that we have as efficiently as we can, and not wasting anything; what that means is that all the money that we earn and raise we can spend on our education programmes and our work on stage. That allows us to do more with the money we get.

"The second thing that's important to us is being a responsible citizen locally, so the fact that when we did our capital project we've now got a green roof on The Lyric, which is contributing to the biodiversity of the area and pollution control in Hammersmith , and we also have an outdoor roof terrace, which is all planted, and it's a nice outdoor space for people to go up to.

"We just think that's part of our jobs locally, to be as green as we possibly can be and to encourage other people to do that too."

The Lyric Theatre has created a sub-brand, LYRIC LOVES GREEN, in order to increase impact of its initiatives and align its environmental messaging to all users of the Lyric's building.

Alexander said: "We encourage all of the people that we work with, we tell them about what we're doing and we give them opportunities to join in, for example lots of people when they all come to work with us get a Lyric water bottle, which means they don't have to go and buy a plastic water bottle from the shops.

"We do clothes swaps and things like that and let some of the young people involved in our projects take part in that. We really do encourage them to think about their impact."

The Lyric's capital building development has been at the centre of the theatre's commitment to sustainability; the recent £20m re-development included technical improvements such as LED lighting upgrades, and ecological interventions like a green sedum roof.

With the appointment of a new executive director following the re-development, the Lyric has shown commitment to continuing this environmentally friendly work.

Alexander said: "It's incredibly important to continue the work.

"In my background I helped set up a national programme for theatre and the arts more generally to embed environmental sustainability into the way that we work as a sector, and in fact I'm on the board of Julie's bicycle, so it's something I'm very passionate about and I think it's really important for arts organisations to do this.

"Buildings are the things that use most energy and have most impact, so we put a lot of work into our capital project to try and build in systems that mean that going forward we'll be as green as we can.

"But it's not just our building, it's how we work on a daily basis. We actively try to be as green as we can be."

For more information about the Creative Industry Green Certificate please visit the Julie's Bicycle website .

The Lyric Theatre is soon opening its Spring season with Simon Stephen's Herons, which opens on Friday January 15.