Liftshare’s FestivalBUDI grows in popularity
As the music industry commits to making festivals increasingly environmentally-friendly, more festival-goers than ever are being helped to car-share this year - for a green, affordable and fun way to get to their event.
Around 20,000 people have now joined liftshare’s festival website, www.FestivalBUDi.com. The site helps music fans find someone else travelling the same way so they can share their journey to any of 25 festivals around the UK.
“Car-sharing was brilliant because it reduced our travel costs drastically, and everybody actually got there more cheaply than we would have done with the public buses the festival puts on,” said Olly Cotterell, who car-shared to Creamfields Festival from York last year. “And as a result of sharing with four complete strangers, I also managed to make four great friends who I still keep in contact with today.”
Music industry environmental coalition, Julie’s Bicycle, recently launched a report looking at audience travel to festivals. Audience travel is a critical area for the music industry, with 43 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions profile coming from audience travel to music events, including festivals.
“According to the Julie’s Bicycle report, 60 per cent of cars travelling to festivals have two or less people travelling in them,” said Ali Clabburn, founder of liftshare. “So it is really encouraging to see the industry take its environmental responsibility seriously, and put in place ways to help festival-goers share their journey and genuinely cut their CO2 emissions,”
“The fact that, by car-sharing, they often save a considerable amount of money and make great new friends into the bargain is just the icing on the cake!”
For the full Julie’s Bicycle report on festival audience travel CO2 emissions, go to www.juliesbicycle.com/research (‘Jam Packed Part 1: Audience travel emissions from festivals 2008’).
