10 minute read
GREEN EVENTS
Does your future look green?
Sustainability experts discuss event and festival sustainability best practices, and StandOut looks at new resources that will help #eventprofs on their sustainability journey
Event professionals representing more than 500 UK festivals and outdoor events gathered at the 2022 Sustainable Events Summit to witness the launch of the Green Events Code; new guidance that aims to establish national minimum sustainability standards, targets, and practices.
Developed by Vision:2025, the industry steering group, the code is intended to provide clear standards and shared targets for sustainability that are understood and adopted by the entire outdoor events industry.
The code will focus on the key areas of governance, energy, travel and transport, food and drink, materials and waste, water, and positive influence, and it is based on five key principles: The industry needs to act urgently on the climate crisis, the industry will act based on evidence, the industry must be transparent and report impact annually, the industry accepts that not all climate-positive decisions will provide cost benefit in the short-term, and the industry will strive to make progress year-on-year.
The overall aim is to commit to a minimum of 50 per cent reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, with specific targets, including a 50 per cent reduction in fossil fuel consumption at live events by 2025, a reduction of at least 30 per cent in meat and dairy consumption on-site by 2030, and to eliminate single-use plastic by 2025.
ADOPTION STRATEGY
The code has been created following a DCMS Select Committee report – published in May 2021 – on The Future of UK Music Festivals. The report recommended that the Government, the Local Government Association (LGA), and representatives from across the festival sector developed standardised environmental objectives that local authorities must adopt when licensing festivals.
Increasingly, local authorities are creating standards and requirements for events as part of licensing and site permission processes. A key aim of the new Green Events Code is to facilitate consistency and over the next year, Vision: 2025 will work with the LGA, the Local Authority Event Organisers Group (LAEOG) and the Institute of Licensing (IoL) to develop an adoption strategy for local authorities. What’s more, the Green Events Code will be piloted as a standard with “pioneer” councils in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
The creation of the code is a major positive and the trial will be instrumental in developing best practices. When developing the code, industry stakeholders were in broad agreement that there was a risk of a “lottery” of standards and enforcement if local authorities were left to create their own standards and enforce them.
At the code’s launch, Chris Johnson, chair of Vision: 2025 said that he hoped that the Green Events Code would emulate the success of The Purple Guide and he said it has the potential to be “something meaningful”. However, he also commented that the journey forward is fraught with questions and challenges as the code’s implementation is navigated.
Cathy Runciman, executive director of EarthPercent UK, told attendees at the summit that the UK event and music industry stands on the brink of an opportunity to show the world that we are leaders. She added: “We need to move beyond minimum voluntary standards and targets. This is an invitation to go further and faster, together.”
THREE AREAS OF FOCUS
The Green Events Code has been financially supported by the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), Superstruct, and Festival Republic, and was developed in close consultation and collaboration with LGA, IoL, LAEOG, UK Music, Live, and the Event Industry Forum.
Vikki Chapman, head of sustainability at Live Nation UK and Ireland, spoke of the organisation’s involvement in the development of the code and said she hoped that the code could be trialled with a local authority in 2023.
In 2022, Live Nation, including Festival Republic, focused on three large sustainability projects. For example, all Festival Republic’s festivals used HVO Green Diesel. Chapman and her team audited the company supplying the fuel using the Renewable Fuels Assurance Scheme and – using DEFRA conversion factors – worked out that using HVO Green Diesel reduced net GHG emissions by 90 per cent. 2022 also saw Festival Republic work with its food traders to calculate the carbon footprint of every meal served at 10 festivals. In 2021, Chapman and her team worked with the University of Gloucester to calculate the carbon footprint of meals sold in street food areas. This work was done on a small scale, but Festival Republic ramped up the project for 2022. It chose to work with the London School of Economics and devised a traffic light system (green = low carbon) that was displayed on menus alongside allergen information. It was a large piece of work that required a huge team effort to gather data from traders, but the “food-print” information provided on the menus enabled festivalgoers to make informed choices about the food they ate.
Food-related emissions make up between 15 and 35 per cent of GHG. This was a key driver for the carbon footprinting of meals initiative. In total, the team worked with 315 food traders and measured the carbon footprint of 1,537 meals and Chapman plans to do more work on food footprints in 2023.
Finally, Festival Republic introduced ecocampsites at Reading and Leeds festival, which required each camper to respect their fellow campers and the environment; and leave the campsite as they found it.
Again, this initiative was well-received, and the campsites will be expanded in 2023.
BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES
At this year’s Royal Parks Half Marathon, LimeLight Sports introduced a plantbased food village to encourage runners and spectators to think about how their food choices impact the environment, and Kendal Calling required all traders to provide a vegetarian/vegan choice as a part of their menu.
From the Fields, organiser of Kendal Calling, worked with betternotstop to create a sustainability programme called Leave Nothing But Memories. The campaign ensured Kendal Calling embarked on an extensive programme of sustainability initiatives incorporating festivalgoers, staff, traders, and artists to minimise their environmental impact at this year’s festival.
More than 20 members of staff studied and supported the behavioural change in audience, sponsors, and traders at Kendal Calling. Betternotstop has reported that more than 98 per cent of tents were taken home and 211 hours were spent litter picking.
Andy Smith, co-founder of Kendal Calling, said: “The afterglow of Kendal Calling 2019 was tarnished by the abandonment of tents on an abominable scale. An unconscionable number of tents – estimated at more than 2,000 – had been left behind by revellers and destined for landfill. Tent abandonment is an infamous problem which plagues the UK festival scene and one which contrasts alarmingly with Kendal Calling’s home on the beautiful Lowther Estate. It was clear we had to pull together and tackle this horror. “Thus, we launched the Leave Nothing But Memories campaign – and the results were spectacular. Walking through the campsites on Monday afternoon was the difference between night and day when compared to previous years.”
GUIDANCE FOR CREW
Kendal Calling reported zero food waste from the festival – with leftover food being distributed across local food banks, recycled within compost, or taken away from the festival and distributed in other methods by food traders, whom all signed a Kendal Calling Eco Pledge. This pledge incorporated all attending the festival and ensured that everyone supported the vital campaign and helped to reduce damage to the festival environment.
Kendal Calling has demonstrated how UK festivals are reinvigorating the sustainability conversation within the festival market, pointing to essential but simple steps that can be easily implemented.
Similarly, Pauline Bourdon, head of sustainability and social cohesion at Team Love, organiser of Love Saves the Day, has worked hard to address sustainability at the festival.
This year, the festival moved to a new site – Ashton Court, Bristol – and has a licence to host 39,999 festivalgoers. Whilst Bourdon had previously measured the festival’s power usage and other data sets, a new site meant she had to start again.
This year, she has measured power usage and monitored waste streams, and she has assessed audience and crew travel too. Furthermore, she has worked with crew this year to ensure they understood Team Love’s stance on sustainability. She explained: “A student did her dissertation on Team Love and our events, and she looked at crew involvement. She found a need to communicate our ethos to our crew so that they could understand us better and we could deepen our work.”
Now, Bourdon has created sustainability guidelines for the crew and for 2023, she plans to do more on crew and artist transport and travel. Plus, she plans to build on a campaign that Team Love started in 2022, which encouraged festivalgoers to purchase their festival outfits in a greener way, such as from local and sustainable clothing brands.
CAPTURING DATA
Gemma Marks, client services director at LimeLight Sports, has had a lead role in developing the organiser’s sustainability strategy. Like Bourdon, LimeLight created the strategy and guidance to provide the team with the key questions and considerations to make better choices for people and the planet.
This year, LimeLight implemented several new sustainability initiatives. For instance, it developed a questionnaire for all suppliers to help capture data to enable the team to calculate the carbon footprint of each LimeLight Sports Club event, and it is working with A Greener Festival to help calculate each event’s carbon footprint. This will allow LimeLight to set a benchmark as it aims to be carbon neutral in 2023.
Marks explained: “In order to be carbon neutral in 2023, we have entered an exciting partnership with Carbon Char Store. This will be industry-leading and hopefully a great way of educating our audience on carbon removals. From a business perspective, we have a travel spreadsheet, which is like a timesheet, that the team completes. All travel to the office/ meetings is captured daily to understand the carbon footprint.
She continued: “Also as part of the registration process for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, we gave participants the opportunity to opt out of a finisher t-shirt and plant a tree instead. This was supported by working with an eco-friendly t-shirt supplier that could produce shirts more locally with shorter lead times (six weeks), enabling us to order the quantity and sizes we needed. Therefore, we reduced waste and 26 per cent of participants opted to plant a tree instead of receiving a finisher t-shirt.”
SHIFT IN ATTITUDE
The above examples are demonstrative of the great efforts that several UK event organisers are going to in order to make their events more sustainable. However, more needs to be done if the UK is to hit climate goals and targets. It is quite evident that our environment is heating up. You only have to look at the extreme weather that the UK experienced this summer and the impact that it has on crews during the build, and customers on live event days.
Future Festival Tools launched at the Sustainable Events Summit – it aims to be a valuable resource for festival and event professionals that want to take meaningful environmental action. If you visit the Future Festival Tools website (www.futurefestivaltools.eu), you will find a sustainable festivals self-assessment tool and there’s a free sustainability e-learning course, which looks at energy, strategy, and travel.
Chapman agreed that more work remains to be done around fuel sources and plant equipment, for example, and that she and her team will continue to shift as many events as possible to the grid. She agreed that there has been a big shift in attitude towards sustainability and event professionals are stepping up. If the UK outdoor events industry is to lead the way in terms of sustainability, the Green Events Code could be instrumental in creating a positive and lasting framework in the absence of legislation.
FESTIVAL REPUBLIC SWITCHED TO HVO FUEL
