A Greener Festival: The How-To Guide For Organisers
A Greener Festival: The How-To Guide For Organisers
How do you define the characteristics of a green event? How do you share positive methods and problematic areas? What are the environmental and business benefits? A Greener Festival: The How-To Guide For Organisers explores the operations involved in an event's execution and provides best practices you can't start applying to make greener events.
Energy Efficiency
Green Events: A How-To Guide For Organisers
Demand for energy continues to grow exponentially year on year and it’s important to establish a good rule of thumb for the event/festivals businesses. Sustainable management of energy covers all whole host of challenges for events. Areas such as fuels and their extraction, energy generation and the systems efficiencies, energy distribution, energy consumption (in terms of amount and efficiency), and energy security implications, etc. Unlike physical waste, energy inefficiency was previously not often seen, energy's intangible impact made it harder to quantify and could often be treated as an unavoidable cost.
Energy efficiency best practices:
Utilising natural light
Request energy-efficient or star rated products
Correctly specify power needs.
Request energy readings before, during and after the event
Monitor the readings to reduce consumption for future events
Waste Minimisation
Green Events: A How-To Guide For Organisers
Waste the events industry should take into account that waste is not only harmful to the environment but also erodes economic efficiency and can have negative social consequences. Running a strict resources management program will have beneficial effects on your profits and furthermore, it will address attendees’ environmental concerns and contribute to a smooth-running event. Festivals have adopted measures to cultivate efficient systems with various green-minded initiatives. To develop a big-picture perspective of how well or badly events produce waste, we need a stringent means of measuring, understanding and communicating our findings. A thorough analysis of data is paramount for the sustainability of your event, your reputation and your finances.
Waste minimisation best practices:
Avoid printed handouts or use post-consumer recycled paper
Aim for reusable items and avoid purchases that will become waste
Ensure that your material inputs match the waste processing capabilities
Save important documents to USB to reduce paper usage
Ensure recycling bins are marked and facilitate the correct separation
Eighth Plate is the catering initiative developed in conjunction with AGF and NCASS which aims to take leftover or unsold meals on the festival site and transport them off to local food shelters. Eighth Plate minimises waste from the events industry and has culminated in providing 14,300 meals for the vulnerable and saving 270 Tonnes of CO2 from polluting the atmosphere. A sustainable, humanitarian, and financially beneficial solution to the festival’s waste management problems.
Water Consumption
Green Events: A How-To Guide For Organisers
A precious resource like water which scarcity is a big global issue that affects millions of people every year.As reported in The Show Must Go On report, water consumption benchmarks at UK festivals are 12.5 litres per audience day so UK summer festivals are consuming an estimated 107,300 m3 (or 107,300,000 litres) annually.Surveys from our research revealed that:
Water wastage seems to be the least concerning the impact to festival visitors with 36% agreeing or strongly agreeing.
When asked whether all festival organisers should implement environmentally friendly practices 2% of the comments made by festival-goers related to conservation of water.
Water conservation should be practised wherever possible and we, as an industry, can help by preventing unnecessary wasted water, poor disposal of wastewater and potential pollution of watercourses with plastics and hazardous liquids. Remember this: Water conservation and reducing water-related impacts help reduce environmental impacts.
Water conservation best practices:
Promote the use of reusable water bottles and mugs and provide free drinking water
Keep an eye to water leaks and fixed them immediately
Minimise water waste by using regulated push taps, waterless toilets, and reducing water pressure
Avoid the use of plastic glitter and single-use plastics
Track data from the use of water and wastewater
Procurement
Procurement is the development of supply chains that decarbonise and green their operations. From the start of the design process through to reintroducing these same materials as recycled goods, eco-procurement is vital for the future of sustainable economic systems. An increasing number of corporate event organisers commit to formally reduce their environmental footprint which is pushing to more suppliers to review and adjust their operations and to acquire the environmental management standards that ensure they can meet their client’s needs.
Procurement best practices:
Have a sustainable procurement policy in place
Use environmentally friendly, where possible local, suppliers
Choose reusable and refillable options where possible
Choose fair or direct trade and organic products
Use paper and wood products that are FSC certified or made from recovered materials
Communication
Green Events: A How-To Guide For Organisers
Effective communication is about dialogue, not ‘media management’. Events audiences need to be able to receive transparent information about your mission and vision for the sustainability of your operations. It is important that your audience have an opportunity to join the conversation and feedback should be encouraged. Support for communication in the context of sustainable development, therefore, involves promoting dialogue in which power-holders listen to, consider, respect and use the knowledge and views of their audience. Support for communication processes must focus on identifying internal and external audiences and strengthening the channels used to communicate with them.
Communication best practices:
A clear Policy that is supported and shared by the whole organisation and involves stakeholders.
Effective planning, for example, a greening plan so that members of the event can refer to, take note of and share practices with their team and service providers.
Rigorous post-event analysis and communication of results to the audience, other event organisers and suppliers involved
Involving the local community and audience’s opinion in the decision-making process
Inspired by This How-To Guide For Organisers? If you want to get the full understanding and in total control of the sustainability of your event, venue or service, sign up to AGF's upcoming training courses: 14 and 15 of January 2020, In-class training course first time alongside Eurosonic - 10 February 2020, Online course through Falmouth University