From carbon labelling and milk vending machines to salvaging old sets and driving down energy consumption, event organisers are working hard to reduce their impact on the environment and improve their relationships with the communities they serve and operate within

Carbon is the slut of the periodic table,” exclaimed Mark Stevenson, cofounder of CUR8, at the recent Green Events and Innovations Conference. Stevenson was talking about The O2’s first carbon-removed gig by The 1975, which used carbon removal methods to extract the carbon generated by the event from the atmosphere.

The session discussed the pilot and how it could create a best-practice model for venues and promoters on how to execute a carbon-removed event and more broadly, how it could inspire more organisers to consider their carbon impact.

The O2 worked alongside A Greener Future (AGF) to determine the event’s emissions, based on the expected outputs for power, food and drink, merchandise sold, travel/transport etc. Massive amounts of data had to be collected before The O2 could pay for any carbon to be physically removed from the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to £150 per tonne.

During the candid session, Stevenson said that any monies should be reinvested so that carbon removal initiatives get cheaper for everyone to use. If everyone “did their bit”, carbon removal could be more affordable, but the reality is that most promoters and organisers are only just getting their heads around measurement and monitoring. Carbon removal seems so advanced when some organisers don’t fully understand what Net Zero means.

Got The Power

One of the more noticeable sustainability trends currently happening across UK event sites is an increased demand for mains power. Mote Park in Kent is looking to put in a sufficient grid connection, Brighton and Hove City Council’s new 15,000-capacity event space, Black Rock, is set to feature mains power and Brighton’s Preston Park will soon feature mains power, meaning a large chunk of Brighton Pride’s Fabuloso in the Park will be run off mains.

Brighton and the area around it is a designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve called The Living Coast. A biosphere region is designed to teach and inspire those living in the local area on how best to balance biodiversity and sustainable development, which is why sustainable measures are so fundamental when it comes to event activity in the city.

For example, the council is looking at how events are impacting the ground. Therefore, it is investigating long-term damage to the city’s green spaces and trees. Ian Baird, outdoor events development manager, culture tourism and sport at Brighton and Hove City Council, and his team are carrying out root protection surveys and integrating that into a basic events protocol. Plus, the council is creating a Living Coast Award for events that demonstrate good sustainability practices and year-on-year improvements.

Milking It

It certainly requires a team effort to ensure positive steps are being taken to lessen our collective impact on the environment. This is something which both Freemans Event Partners and Hay Festival recognise.

At this year’s Cheltenham Festival, Freemans Event Partners worked with Klimato and introduced carbon labelling on menus. All menus used a traffic light system to display the carbon footprint of all meals.

This year, Freemans Event Partners is working with the organisers of the New Forest Show, Cheshire Show and Badminton Horse Trials and carbon labelling will be present on all event/concession menus. Plus, Freemans Event Partners is talking to clients about trialling the collection of edible food waste. But that’s not all. The company is working with Net Zero Now, which helps businesses to identify and reduce their carbon emissions, to benchmark its head office and its carbon footprint whilst working on-site at an event.

The business is focusing on its climate impacts. Likewise, Hay Festival has put sustainability at the heart of everything it does. So much so that Andy Fryers, Hay Festival’s sustainability director, and his team are now simply “tweaking” things on-site, analysing any new developments around technology that will help make bigger changes, and delving deep into tiny details.

Small Measure But Big Impact

“Let me talk about waste,” said Fryers. “Around 85 per cent of our waste is recycled, reused or composted. This is higher than the industry standard, but now we’re into that last 15 per cent and a lot of that is contaminated.

“About five years ago, we introduced a reusable cup scheme, which meant we’ve gone down from 300 to 400 wheelie bins full of coffee cups down to less than one now. We’ve also seen a corresponding drop in plastic, but we want to remove stuff and not have it on our site in the first place. And one of the biggest things for us is milk containers because we sell a lot of coffee.”

Fryers continued: “All the individual traders bring four or six-pint plastic milk containers, which are very practical, and we do recycle them, but we’d rather not have them. So this year, we are trialling a centralised milk system.”

Hay Festival is working with a local supplier who operates a milk vending machine that sells milk sourced from a local farm. It is yet to be decided if the supplier will bring in reusable containers, full of milk, which will be used, washed, and brought back the next day (a large-scale milk bottle scheme) or whether traders will be asked to bring reusable containers and fill them up with milk at a central point.

Whilst there are many conversations around milk and the sustainability of nondairy products, Hay is looking at this from the point of view of the container that the product comes in rather than the product itself. Fryers added: “If you look at a typical event, it’s quite a small impact. But because it’s one of the few remaining things we’ve got, because we’ve ticked a lot of our boxes, it’s quite a big thing for us to try and nail.”

Be More Transparent

This year, Hay Festival is investigating the

FREEMANS EVENT PARTNERS: CARBON LABELLING

use of big battery banks to reduce the use of backup generators and it is looking to trial individual metering for traders and caterers to drive down energy consumption. Kendal Calling – which has a dedicated 20-strong sustainability department – is looking to run the “Kids Calling” area exclusively on renewables as a pilot and it is also exploring the idea of a circular waste plastic initiative, but this is more likely to happen in 2025.

Green Gathering is extending its Green Traveller incentives. People who arrive on public transport, by bicycle or on foot receive a free programme and discounts on pre-pitched tents and camping accessories from Camplight. This year, the organising team is adding discounts on tipi hire – both whole tipis and simple, affordable “dorm beds” in tipis – which will enable people to travel lighter, reducing the need for private transport. Yet it’s not the only change.

Em Weirdigan, director of Green Gathering, explained: “We’re also increasing signage and publicity about our ‘Moon Loos’ – toilets with screened washing areas for people using menstrual cups and other reusable period wear, the aim being to encourage a reduction in plastic waste as well as providing a service to those already using these products who struggle to wash them in standard festival toilets.”

Site Event is working with Organise Chaos on all Brockwell Live shows (including Mighty Hoopla and Cross the Tracks), which use grey water down the toilets rather than blue, and Project Power is providing solar and battery power to events in Brockwell Park too. Clare Goodchild, director of Organise Chaos, which is delivering all Brockwell Live shows, said: “After the events in 2023, we did a community feedback session and 55 per cent of people said that the environment was important to them.

“We did a lot around sustainability but probably didn’t speak about it enough. It’s really important to people so we need to be more transparent.”

Accountability

As well as working with Greenbox on waste management and ecolibrium and eventree on travel tracking initiatives, Brockwell Live has also partnered with Gig Buddies, opening the events to people with learning difficulties, and this year, site walks are being arranged for local youth organisations to teach kids about the opportunities in the event industry.

Holly Hollister has been appointed as sustainability manager on all Brockwell Live events, Better Not Stop is helping Goodchild and her team to build sustainability policies, AGF will be carbon monitoring the events for the first time and targets are being set so everyone can be more accountable.

Data Collection

Extreme E, the off-road electric vehicle race series, has published its third sustainability report and has revealed that by leveraging solar and green hydrogen energy, it has maintained its carbon-neutral status and reduced its overall carbon footprint by 8.2 per cent. EY teams calculated that 8,301 tCO2-e was emitted during Season 3 – down from 9,045 tCO2-e across Season 2 – despite travelling further afield and holding doubleheader races at each X Prix.

This achievement is supported by Extreme E’s motorsport race site infrastructure, which is powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, including green hydrogen in remote locations produced by ENOWA’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell System.

During Season 4, EY – Extreme E’s official sustainability partner – will again run pre and post-racing impact assessments.

Already, the series has issued statements of intent to increase the number of solar and wind energy sources available to Extreme E in Season 4 and aims to work with Power Logistics to deploy small-scale wind turbine technology to tie in with its battery storage system. Furthermore, it also recognises that there are untapped opportunities to improve its waste management approach and wants to pioneer new and effective waste management systems. In Season 4, it wishes to improve data collection and monitoring of its waste to better understand the event’s waste footprint, which will inform the development of new and improved waste management strategies.

Work Smarter

Data collection and monitoring are vital if organisers want to reach specific sustainability goals. Boomtown has spent years collecting data because it recognises that if it wants to reduce its impact on the world, the first step needs to be establishing what that impact currently is.

Tess Wilson, event operations manager and head of sustainability at Boomtown Fair, explained: “In the past, people have sometimes felt threatened by the subject of sustainability, and getting to the bottom of what it means for them.

“Within an industry that is often under a lot of time or budgetary pressure, asking people to prepare additional data for you, and increasing workloads dramatically doesn’t often work. We try to work with other departments to find ways to utilise their existing spreadsheets, orders and schedules to do most of the hard work for us.”

Wilson is a huge advocate of making existing processes and systems work harder, rather than creating new ones. This means adjusting or developing what you already do, to get it to achieve even more. She says that when you start to look at the information you need, you’ll find that a lot of it already exists somewhere, or only needs a minor adjustment to make it do what you need. That could be looking at ANPR information or cashless data.

For example, after the pandemic, Boomtown went fully cashless. It means that the organising team has digital records of every transaction made on-site.

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Boomtown

When working on its Co2e impact assessment, it already had data on everything that was consumed (or bought) on-site, from gin and tonics to mac ‘n’ cheese. With some input from traders, and the help of Klimato, and the Co2e database of food and drink, the team was able to calculate Boomtown’s overall impact relating to all food and drink sold on-site. It was a terrifying number, but one that Wilson and her team are empowered to tackle and even more determined to reduce.

Fancy Spreadsheets

Staggeringly, 20 per cent of all meals eaten on-site at Boomtown can be attributed to crew. Hence, the festival’s sustainability team is now focusing on crew catering. Wilson commented: “This year, we are building on three main things to educate our wider team to help reduce waste in crew catering. One – all teams book and order meals a month in advance so the food purchased reflects demand, making Red Radishes’ procurement process more efficient. Two – each meal will be given a carbon value so at the point of decision, crews feel informed about what is the best sustainable option. This also builds on our meat-free Monday and meat-free lunches policy. Three – encouraging all crew to bring their own plates/cutlery to reduce the number of single-use plates on site.” Boomtown will provide washing facilities to help facilitate this behavioural change. But it’s not the only area of focus for 2024. Having undertaken a lot of data collection in 2023, production transport is a big deal.

“Production transport was something we hadn’t delved into in great detail before, but having turned to our Scope III emissions, we knew it was essential that we finally started to tackle it,” Wilson said. “We integrated our data collection into our existing vehicle accreditation process, where all delivery vehicles go to the office on arrival, to give their registration, phone number etc.”

Boomtown asked drivers and suppliers three simple additional questions. What postcode did you come from today? What vehicle did you drive? What fuel do you use?

“In addition to this, our amazing artist team added a similar series of questions into their pre-existing advancing forms, which gave us a phenomenal amount of information,” added Wilson, who alongside Lauren Blackburne-Tinker, Boomtown’s deputy event operations and sustainability manager, worked with suppliers and utilised their delivery and trucking schedules to work out journeys.

With most of the hard work done by a handful of “quite fancy spreadsheets”, Boomtown was shocked by the results. The team discovered that its production transport movements equate to 23 full loops of the planet. Therefore, this year the festival is focusing on how it can tackle this impact and is looking into crew shuttle buses from Bristol, for instance.

Just Do It

Again, transport is not the only aspect that Wilson and her team are monitoring closely. Lifespan planning is a key focus for the production team too, which looks at stage and set builds in some detail.

For example, once the festival is over, the organising team look at all the stage sets and creative pieces and decide what can be used and what has reached the end of its life. If it can be reused, any specific parts are salvaged and put aside to be used again.

Wilson explained: “If you are going to create something for the first time, with new materials, you have to ask how long will it last, and what will it go on to be? We look to enhance the lifecycle of our materials by re-using, rather than recycling. This can take different forms, be it a redesign, renovation and facelift, or salvage to go into other projects or sites.”

She concluded: “Our main aim is to keep learning more about ourselves, and developing the event in a way that supports all of its values in cohesion. It is possible to create a world that is beautiful, creative, magical, fun, economical, and has a positive impact on the environment. You just have to make it so.”

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