Are you ready to rock and recycle? - More on green festivals
If you are one of the thousands of music fans travelling to T in the Park, Wizard or a festival further afield this summer, Kate Hodal looks at how reducing your carbon footprint needn’t cost the Earth
Published: 28/06/2008, The Press and Journal
HOME to more than 450 music festivals a year, ranging from the small (2,000 people) to the huge (40,000 attendees or more), Britain is one of the best places to see your favourite band in the great outdoors.
But with all those people attending all those festivals comes a whole lot of waste – discarded food and drink bottles, left-behind tents and camping equipment, and even, in some cases, children forgotten in the mass exodus to the car park.
There’s so much energy consumed at these events and so many items deserted, in fact, that a charity devoted to reducing the UK music industry’s carbon footprint, the oddly named Julie’s Bicycle, reckons that up to one million tonnes of CO are produced every year because of them [JB Ed - correction: The UK Music Industry produces at least approx 540,000t CO2e p/a, which includes festival events and audience travel to festivals. A large music festival (more than 40,000 people) including audience transport will produce in the order of 2,000 t CO2e.]
Eco-worriers will be glad to know that a whole lot has been done to green them up in the last couple of years, reviving the hippy ethic that started these festivals in the first place.
In a survey of more than 1,400 UK music festival-goers earlier this year, 36% said they consider how green a festival is before purchasing a ticket, and nearly half (48%) were happy to pay more for an eco-friendly musical experience.
With that mindset, it looks like festivals will be getting even greener.
But it’s going to take some convincing – mostly of the eco-weary audience members themselves, says Ben Challis, director of charity A Greener Festival, which has established a benchmark eco-award for music events based on carbon footprint, waste, recycling and environmental impact.
“You wouldn’t leave a tent to rot in your back garden, but people will leave wellington boots, tents, sleeping bags, the works, after a festival,” he says.
“You ask them why they’ve left it and they say someone will clear it up. They don’t know it’s going to landfill. People need to be incentivised – and festivals are a great way of doing that.”
With Glastonbury handing out biodegradable tent pegs this year, and many festivals incorporating liftshares, compostable food and drink containers, and biofuel and solar-powered stages, summer 2008 looks like a green revolution.
“A big shift has taken place in the last year,” says Alison Tickell, director of Julie’s Bicycle.
“There’s a growing commitment of festival promoters and organisers to go green, and the audience is definitely learning.”
With transport to and from the festivals accounting for 75% of their emissions, both Alison and Ben recommend liftshares or public transport wherever possible.
“The thing is, someone living in a tent for four days is going to burn less energy and produce fewer emissions than someone at home with a kettle and TV and stereo on,” explains Alison.
“But how festival-goers travel is out of our control – we can only ask people to think about reducing their own footprint.” [JB Ed - Note - festival travel is not out of our control but it is an indirect emission source and therefore not the sole responsibility of the music industry.]
Ben thinks that requests can only go so far.
“If the carrot doesn’t work, you’ll have to use the stick,” he says.
“You can give away free beer to encourage recycling, but you could also say, ‘If you don’t bring back your cup, you’ll lose your deposit’. We’re all gonna have to change to start thinking like that anyway.”
For a list of this year’s greenest festivals, see below – and check out our top tips on how to go eco-friendly while you party.
TOP TIPS FOR GREEN CAMPERS
The team at A Greener Festival has the following advice for festival-goers:
1 If you can, travel by public transport – if you can’t, cycle, car or liftshare.
2 Take your tent home with you, or use services like MyHab (www.myhab.com) or Tangerine Fields (www.tangerine fields.com) to get your own fully set-up tent for two to six that can be reused and recycled. Problem sorted.
3 Buy durable products, returnable bottles and containers that can be refilled – a bottle of water can be refilled at taps onsite.
4 Use rechargeable batteries or buy a portable solar or wind charger for your mobile, MP3 player and radio. Get a wind-up torch – they don’t run out. Nigel’s Eco Store (www.nigelsecostore.com) has a great selection.
5 Get a pair of wellies that mean something: Hunter Boots has teamed up with charity WaterAid to get water and sanitation into four rural communities in Madagascar. The specially designed limited-edition boots, priced £75 – with £50 of that going to WaterAid – will be signed by performers like Jay-Z and Kings of Leon. There are only 1,000 available, so get yours now from www.hunter-boot.com [JB Ed - AGreenerFestival.com doesn’t actually recommend wellies. Check out the full list of the 10 ten tips here.]
ECO-FRIENDLY EVENTS
JULY 3-6
Kent’s 600-acre Wild Animal Park is home this year to Zoo Thousand, where Dizzee Rascal and Dan Le Sac will be competing for attention with Siberian tigers, black rhinos and the biggest gorillarium in the world. Tree-planting, car-sharing and African safaris are all planned for attendees.
Hyde Park’s O2 Wireless Festival with headliners Beck, Jay-Z and Morrissey, is harnessing pedal power this year – with fans encouraged to re-juice their mobile phones by cycling for 15 minutes on one of three stationary bespoke BMX and Chopper bicycles. And if you try to sneak into the London festival, check out the fences you’re jumping – they’re made of recycled plastic bottles.
JULY 11-12
Ethical music festival 2000 Trees, a small gathering in the Cotswolds where Art Brut and Beans On Toast will be playing, is run entirely on biodiesel, recycles nearly 70% of its waste, has biodegradable and reusable food and drink containers, and has a policy of UK-based bands only in its line-up, to reduce CO emissions.
JULY 17-20
With its cabaret, comedy, poetry, theatre and music stages, Latitude, in Suffolk, is one of the most interesting festivals to go to this summer, not least because it boasts the world’s first fuel-cell-powered festival stage and hands out compost sacks to all attendees.
AUGUST 8-10
Leicester’s Summer Sundae Weekender won a Greener Festival Award (GFA) last year and is continuing the green pledge this year with compostable food and drink containers, camera film canisters handed out as ashtrays, and energy-saving light bulbs given away (1,000 were given away last year, making SSW carbon neutral).
Enniscorthy’s Irish Green Gathering will see eco discussions, loads of music, organic and local food and a healing area, and encourages cycling to get there.
AUGUST 15-17
The Croissant Neuf Summer Party in Usk, South Wales, has a 10kW PA system and showers running on solar power, and bills itself as “Britain’s premier solar-powered music event”. Popular with families, Croissant Neuf strives to keep all food onsite 100% organic and locally sourced.
Brecon Beacons-based Green Man Festival, where Spiritualized and Super Furry Animals will be playing, has a solar-powered stage, a healing garden and a science tent where you can learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know from boffins from the Institute of Physics.
AUGUST 22-24
This year’s Reading and Leeds festivals are giving away free tickets to anyone who wants to join Team Recycle and become a green bobby. If that’s too much effort for you, anyone handing in three bags of rubbish will receive a token for a free can of beer. And if you return your drink cup rather than bin it, you get a 10p refund.
The industry’s biggest dance party and home to Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold – Creamfields – has signed up with the car-share website, www.liftshare.com, to encourage festival-goers to travel together (four people in a car has a lower CO impact per person than all of them taking the train), and is giving discarded tents to charity.
SEPTEMBER 12-14
Trance and dance-focused Waveform Project in Wiltshire, another GFA winner last year, will have compostable loos, all-organic and local food, and stages run on solar, pedal, biodiesel and wind power.
The Isle of Wight’s Bestival, which has already sold out, is encouraging lower carbon emissions by asking attendees to swim the three miles across choppy seas rather than take the ferry. Now that’s revolutionary green thinking.