Grassroots Festival

Grassroots Festival is a one-day festival in Jersey which has gained A Greener Festival Award 2010 with Highly Commended rating, and 1 star Industry Green certification for the 2010 event, showing that they’re committed to improvement of carbon emissions and environmental performance.

The festival’s environmental policy outlined a number of sustainability initiatives underway and Grassroots signed up to the 10:10 campaign in 2010 agreeing to reduce its emissions by 10% by undertaking Industry Green certification. Grassroots will be able to prove their commitment in 2011, having now created their first “baseline” of carbon emissions for the 2010 event.

In association with Durrell and Eco-active, a small charge was added to tickets to enable audiences to offset festival emissions and associated travel. All suppliers, contractors and vendors on site were provided with eco contracts and education and awareness campaigns were running to ensure the staff, suppliers and audience were up to date with the festival’s initiatives and their own environmental obligations.

Grassroots festival has its own Eco Village as part of the festival to raise awareness of green issues, and promotes a number of environmental initiatives to engage its audiences in reducing their environmental impact. In 2010 the Eco Village was a plastic-free zone, and the PA scrims from 2009’s event were recycled into shopping bags. The festival t-shirts were made out of organic cotton and Global Cool promoted a sustainable travel campaign for more walking, cycling and public transport use. Marketing was kept as green as possible by using 100% recycled paper. Jersey Water refill stations were used to refill reusable bottles for free, as no bottled water was sold on site; a ‘bucket’ scheme gave people a free drink in return for 15 empty cans to recycle; and all smokers were given free ‘boodi’ ashtrays.

The festival is also conscious of the legacy it leaves behind for the beach-side location it enjoys and has launched a Beach Clean Campaign, which gives its audience the opportunity to ‘adopt’ an area of a beach and commit to clean it four times a year.

Grassroots is run by Allez-oop, and the company’s own environmental policy outlines running applications for ISO 14001, BS 8901 and Eco Active Business Level 3. The company is also working with the Global to Local sustainability consultancy, is a member of ‘1% for the Planet’ and has already achieved Eco Active Business member status.

Linzi Wilson, Co Director of Allez-oop Promotions said: “We are thrilled to have an Industry Green rating, there is always room for improvement and we are more than willing to find out where we can better ourselves and the festival. We aim to gain more recognition throughout 2011 by aspiring to make our event completely carbon neutral. This would be an incredible achievement and through all our efforts we believe this goal is definitely within our reach.”