Australia's Rainbow Serpent Earns A Greener Festival Award

Rainbow Serpent Festival, a four-day, 17,000-capacity, open-air electronic music, art, and lifestyle festival that takes place in Lexton, Victoria, is the first medium-sized festival down under to have received A Greener Festival Award since 2015.Previously, comparable-sized Aussie events such as Bluesfest, Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival have earned awards, but it is only Island Vibe Festival, a small reggae event that takes place on North Stradbroke Island, that has won the award more recently when it bagged an award in 2017.To enter the award scheme, led by A Greener Festival, events first complete a self-assessment, which is followed by an onsite independent inspection from one of A Greener Festival's assessment crew, and post-event data gathering and reports. The assessment forms the basis for the events Environmental Impact Assessment and is a tool to help events to identify where improvements can be made, as well as celebrating the positive and successful existing actions they are taking towards an environmentally sound event.Communications director of Rainbow Serpent Festival, Tim Harvey, said: “We’re honoured to receive this award. We have an incredibly dedicated team who work non-stop to meet our sustainability goals. While it’s fantastic to be recognised for our achievements so far there’s still so much more to do and we are determined to achieve better results for the environment each year.”A Greener Festival has assessed over 450 festivals over the last ten years, worldwide, and re-launched the awards’ updated criteria in 2016, in order to raise the bar, and to increase the feedback and reporting available to events.According to Amie Green, the long-time Australian award co-ordinator: “For an event that is based in a rural location to gain a Highly Commended Award is no mean feat. One of the biggest issues to tackle is that Australia’s festival culture is entrenched with the perceived ‘need’ to have a vehicle close by. Rainbow Serpent are tackling long-held beliefs by undertaking monitoring and data analysis, and have put in place initiatives to see less cars on the road and in the festivals' campgrounds.”Other 2017 recipients of a highly commended award are:

• Cambridge Folk Festival (UK)
• DGTL Festival (NL)
• Extrema Outdoor (NL)
• Greenbelt Festival (UK)
• HebCelt (UK)
• Ilosaarirock Festival (FI)
• Paradise City (BE)
• Roskilde Festival (DK)

Festivals and events from 12 countries participated in the awards programme in 2017 - a full list of winners can be found here.To find out more about how your event can become involved with A Greener Festival, click here.Interested in becoming A Greener Festival assessor or wish to find out more about how you can make your event more sustainable? - click here.

• A Greener Festival is a non-profit organisation that co-ordinates the Greener Festival Awards, globally, and has performed onsite assessments of over 450 festivals since 2007.
• A Greener Festival organises the annual Green Events & Innovations Conference in partnership with the ILMC, London.
• A Greener Festival provides training for sustainability and event practitioners and operates an education partnership with universities and associate membership for event service providers.  

photo credit: James Gillot Photography