Turning the tide?

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke joined a team of climate change campaigners on Brighton beach at the weekend to create a ‘human sculpture’ of the eleventh century English king, Canute, who as legend has it, proved to his nobles that he was not omnipotent by ordering the tide to stop coming in. It didn’t. The human sculpting was part of the 350 Earth campaign, which has instigated a series of large artistic projects around the World ahead, this time ahead of of the United Nations meeting on climate change that begins in Cancun, Mexico, today as part of a bid to convince politicians that more action should be taken to stop climate change now.

You can see the photos of the King Canute sculpture here:
www.flickr.com/photos/350org/sets/72157625353115145/

And see some other 350 Earth creations at this URL:
www.flickr.com/photos/350org/sets/72157625353115145/

Photo above  by Nick Cordes  (c) 2003  The Televison Company (London) Ltd

35000 reasons to love the coach

Audience travel to music venues is the single biggest contributor to the music industry’s carbon footprint – accounting for a huge 45% of the music industry’s carbon footprint and festivals are a big part of this – with audience travel to out of town sites often contributing over 75% of that event’s greenhouse gas emissions. Coach travel has other environmental benefits: Far fewer natural resources are used in the operation of coaches than other forms of transport, the required infrastructure and associated costs are much smaller and noise pollution is vastly reduced. The Big Green Report is the second annual report reporting the carbon savings made by customers travelling on the Big Green Coach services rather than travelling by car to festivals and events including Sonisphere, Hop Farm, Creamfields, Global Gathering, Pink Pop, Kendal Calling, 2000 Trees, Beach Break Live, Dour Festival, Camp Bestival, V Festival, End of the Road, Wakestock and the Stereophonics at Cardiff Arms Park.

The team behind Big Green Coach deliver a “one-stop-shop’ for festivals’ transport requirements. BGC say that travelling to music events should be an extension of the event and by working with event promoters they look to develop an advantage for public transport users and enhance their experience from simply boarding a coach and travelling to an event, to being the start of a brilliant music event experience. BGC are working hard to increase coach penetration for festivals/events by engaging with attendees well in advance of the event and by constantly working on social networks and talking to festival goers on message boards, BGC can develop new routes, departure points and times requested by the audience to make travelling by coach easier and more accessible.

With 35,000 passengers on Big Green Coach this year the TOTAL PASSENGER MILES TRAVELLED was 2,996,375 miles … Or…120 times around the earth! The AVERAGE (mean) DISTANCE TRAVELLED by festival goers on a return journey was 188 miles; the FURTHEST RETURN JOURNEY was 774 miles (Edinburgh to Sonisphere, Knebworth). The SHORTEST RETURN JOURNEY was 7.4 miles (Tonbridge to Hop Farm Festival).

A fleet of 700 coaches was required to deliver all Big Green Coach customers to and from festivals during 2010. Each full coach takes approximately a quarter mile of traffic congestion from the roads, this means that the Big Green Coach operation removed 175 miles worth of queuing traffic from the roads around festival sites.…or a standing single lane of traffic from London all the way to Barnsley!

There are substantial carbon savings when compared to a car with the average UK car occupancy of just 2.6 people. The TOTAL CARBON SAVING MADE BY CUSTOMERS TRAVELLING BY BIG GREEN COACH RATHER THAN BY CAR TO FESTIVALS IN 2010 was 12,999 KG Co2 based on the average car emission of 33.515* gCO2 per mile and the average coach emission of 8.552* gCO2 per mile (*Defra / Julie’s Bicycle. Jam Packed. Part 1: Audience Travel). This would equate to 64,997,156 Google searches or 928,531 Boiling kettles – and doesn’t include Shuttle Bus and Park & Ride services!

So 13,500 car journeys were removed from the roads of the UK and using the average return journey distance of 188 miles – there have been a further 2.5 million fewer miles of car journeys as a result of BGC coach travel. Hooray!

http://www.biggreencoach.co.uk/

How green is the music industry?

Another Planet

The Independent reports that most British businesses fail to comply with government guidance on reporting their carbon footprints and a survey of 100 companies said that only a handful came within striking distance with complying with the Defra guidance which means that there may be signifiucant problems for many companies when the rules become mandatory. Whilst 57% of companies reported some disclosure, only 37% made formal disclosure in annual reports and just 9% were reported in accordance with the Defra guidelines. Amongst problems with those reporting was a lack of transparancy aroiund measurement and reporting principles. 88% of companies in the energy, utility and infrastructure sectors reported, 58% in the media, technology and telecomms sector and 45% in the manufacturing sector. Of all repoirting only 8% was assured by a third party.

The Observer reports that UK shopper spend £700 million on illegally harvested wood every year, mostly as paper, furniture and flooring. A survey by the WWF found that 50% of consumers in the UK had no idea that wood for sale in the UK could be from illegal sources and the UK is the forth latgest importer of illegal wood after China, the USA and Japan. Currently schemes like the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) labelling scheme offers some information on sustainable forestry to consumers:  in 2012 the European Commission is due to bring in new rules banning illegally sourced timber although commentators doubt the legislation will be effective. Deforestation is reponsible for 15% of the World’s greenhouse gas emissions. See more at www.www.org.uk/whatwoodyouchoose

The great biofuel debate continues with a new report saying that Europe’s guarantee to source 10% of vehicle fuel from renewable sources such as biofuels within the next 10 years will cause a rise in carbon emissions – and that the policy is counterproductive, causing more greenhouse gas emissions than are saved. The report from the Institute of European Environmental Policy concludes that biofuels will produce an extra 56 millions tonnes of CO2 per annum and an area somewhere around the size of Belgium will need to be cultivated. If Europe cannot find the space then the production of first generation biofuel crops such as sugar cane, oliseed rape and palms will shift to Asia and South America, taking land away from food production and potentially causing deforestation. Environmental charitoes have long argued that the European Union needs to re-think its targets. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/biofuel-plan-will-cause-rise-in-carbon-emissions-2129773.html

With Prime Minister David Cameron leading a UK trade mission to China you might woder what our biggets export to China currently is – well, it seems that of the $7.8 billion in exports – up to one quarter is WASTE – sent to China for recycling. whilst we do export plastics ($366 million) and rubber ($106 million) to China, even some of this wll be plastics and rubber for recycling.

UK Supermarkets have abandoned their commitment to halve the number of plastic bags given out to consumers. Currently UK shoppers use SIX BILLION plastic bags a year (thats 100 for each and every one of us) and these take up to 1000 years to degrade and pollute our towns, countryside, rivers and the sea. Some of the big chains (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Co-op, Somerfield, M&S and Waitrose) claimed that they had narrowly missed a target to reduce bags by 50% between 2006 and 2009, although by March 2010 they had achived a laudable 43% reduction compared to 2006. But in May bag use went UP by 23 million bags (or 5%) compared to May 2009 and it seems some customers resent being restricted from taking as many bags as they want,  and now the supermarkets have dropped the commitment.

The Observer reports that new research shows that up to 1 billion people risk  losing their homes to the effects of climate change. Devastating changes to sea levels, rainfall, water supplies, weather systems and crop yields are increasingly likely before the end of the century, scientists will warn in a special report  to be released at the start of climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico. The report  will reveal that up to a billion people face losing their homes in the next 90 years because of failures to agree curbs on carbon emissions. Up to three billion people could lose access to clean water supplies because global temperatures cannot now be stopped from rising by 4C. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/28/cancun-climate-summit-weather

New Julies Bicycle research points to green gains from digital promos

Switching to digital delivery of music promotional releases across the independent music sector would save 1,525 tonnes of CO₂ annually – a reduction of 86% – new research conducted by Julie’s Bicycle on behalf of AIM and BPI has revealed.

Detailed research undertaken by industry environmental initiative Julie’s Bicycle estimates that the manufacture, packaging and transport of promo CDs by AIM and BPI indie members total 1,686 tonnes of CO₂, equivalent to three times the annual energy, water and waste emissions of a large performance arena.

The research follows the work undertaken by AIM following the “10 BIG IDEAS” session at the anniversary of its 10^th AGM in July 2009. Reducing the number of physical CD promos was pinpointed as one of the winning ideas to emerge. 

Working closely with independent labels and three digital solution providers, Soundcloud, Fastrax and FATdrop, Julie’s Bicycle undertook an analysis of the promotional market which showed that in 2009 digital promos accounted for almost a quarter of promotional material delivered, with 9,000 files being distributed digitally compared to 25,000 physical CDs. 

The subsequent evaluation of the value chain from promo production to end-user calculated the carbon footprint of a promotional CD to be 649g CO₂ compared to 62g CO₂ produced by a digital file, thereby demonstrating the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to be achieved from a change of distribution model. 

In a bid to embed sustainability across the industry, the report further recommends a shift away from the traditional jewel case to lower carbon packaging and calls on the industry to place a greater emphasis on recycling material no longer suitable for use.

You can download the full report at www.juliesbicycle.com

Practical advice on water management at Festivals

This is the second report from the excellent GREEN EVENTS GERMANY conference in Bonn (3rd and 4th November) and there were some excellent panels at the conference which was hosted by the RhineKultur Festival, the European festivals organisation YOUROPE and Buckinghamshire New University. Lots of European festivals attended including the Wacken Festival, Melt! and Das Fest (all in Germany) Open Air St Gallen in Switzerland, Roskilde in Denmark , Ilosaarirock in Finland, Welcome to the Future and Pinkpop in the Netherlands and the Glastonbury Festival in the UK. There were also representatives from a number of organisations present including Julies Bicycle from the UK, Germany’s Green Music Initiative and the German federal agency for nature (Bundesamt fur Naturschutz) . I am blogging about two presentations from the ‘production’ seminar, firstly on sustainable power for mobile generators (see the earlier Blog)  and now  on water conservation.

Water! We all know that bottled water is incredibly wasteful – in the resources needed for packaging as well transport to a site – and waste remains after the water in drunk – and many greenfield festivals have to import water in tankers for drinking, washing, showers, toilets and for caterers. This was a really interesting talk from Jans Schonhoff from EventLogistiker (www.eventlogisticker.de) which gave some simple and key advice on reducing water use on site through simple and effective measures. These included

*  limiting the time duration of water flow in any showers

* Minimising the use of water in WCs

* Using old style waterless urinals

* re-using grey water from showers and other washing to flow through urinals or use to flush toilets (complicated by shampoos and soaps)

* using ‘nipples’ rather than taps for hand washing

* Reducing the use of detergents and chemicals on-site so water can be recycled or resued. Grey water that is full of shampoo cannot really be used to flush and also cannot be dealt with by organic composting methods

* Try and use eco-friendly detergents for washing kitchen utensils and avoid contamination with fats and oils.

*  Avoid other contaminants in waste water

*  A central system for heating water is often very efficient

Jans explained that in Germany there were particular problems as regulations meant that any water that humans used had to be ‘drinking’ quality water for everything on-site – very wasteful. The same seems to apply in the UK.  Jans suggests that a far better systems is to have two ‘pipes’ for water – one for clean drinking water and one for grey water that can be re-used on-site.

Jans also pointed out that transporting water and waste means that there are additional CO2 footprints for your festival!

Useful contacts:

Aqualogistiker (Germany) : www.aqualogistiker.de

Event Water Solutions (USA):  www.eventwatersolutions.com

WaterMills (UK): http://www.watermills.net/

Compost toilets:  www.naturalevent.co.uk and http://www.thunderboxes2go.co.uk/ 

Some friendy bottled waters : www.lifepurewater.com and www.belu.org and www.frankwater.com

The Green Events Germany website can be found at http://www.green-events-germany.eu/

All the winners at the UK Festival Awards 2010

A host winners were at the UK Festival Awards at the O2 on Thursday Night to pick up their Greener Festival Awards, including team members from Shambala, Wood, Croissant Neuf Summer Party, Hard Rock Calling, Bestival, Camp Bestival, Sonisphere, Splendour, The City of London Festival, our friends from the Hadra Trance Festival in France, Grassroots in Jersey, the Glastonbury Festival, Isle of Wight Festival, Waveform, T-in-the-Park, Big Tent and Standon Calling. The lovely photos are by Sarah Moore and we thank  Roberston Taylor for hosting the drinks reception.

The Croissant Neuf team pick up the UKFA Greener Festival Award

 

We also made the Award for the overall ‘greenest’ UK festival and, in a hard fought battle, the honour went for the second year to the Croissant Neuf Summer Party

The main winners on the night at the UK Festival Awarsds were

• Best Metropolitan Festival – Gaymers Camden Crawl
• Best Family Festival in association with Showsec – Camp Bestival
• Best Breakthrough Artist in association with Rizla – Mumford & Sons
• Best Dance Event in association with Peppermint Bars – Creamfields
• Feel Good Act of the Summer in association with Be-at TV – Paolo Nutini
• Best New Festival in association with Access All Areas – Vintage At Goodwood
• Headline Performance of the Year in association with Jagermeister – AC/DC at Download Festival
• Virtual Festivals’ Critics Choice* – Biffy Clyro at Glastonbury
• Overseas Festival – Snowbombing
• Anthem of the Summer in association with HMV – Florence & The Machine ‘You’ve Got The Love’
• Line-Up of the Year* in association with XL Video – Rockness
• Promoter of the Year in association with IQ – Glastonbury
• Best Small Festival in association with Doodson Entertainment – Kendal Calling
• Best Medium Festival in association with Smirnoff Flavours – Green Man
• Best Major Festival in association with Tuborg – Bestival
• Lifetime Achievement in association with Music Week – Geoff Ellis, DF Concerts
• Outstanding Contribution to Festival Production in association with TPi – Neil McDonald
• Best Sponsor Activation in association with Brand Republic – Coca Cola
• The Grass Roots Festival Award in association with Robertson Taylor – 2000 Trees
• A Greener Festival Award in association with agreenerfestival.com – Croissant Neuf Summer Party

 And best toilets went to  T In The Park!

 

Andrew Haworth picks up Hard Rock Calling and Wireless's Greener Festival Awards for 2010

ClientEarth backed by Coldplay

Coldplay at Glastonbury 2005

Coldplay have announced they are to become patrons of the public interest environmental law organisation ClientEarth. ClientEarth work in the UK, in Europe and across the globe with governments, green groups and others to ensure environmentally sound laws are written, poor ones are challenged and changed and that environmental laws are properly enforced.

Coldplay said: “ClientEarth is at the forefront of changing the way the planet’s resources are governed. They have a positive and pragmatic approach to environmental issues, improving and enforcing environmental law. Coldplay are proud to support them.”

Coldplay’s creative director  Phil Harvey is one of ClientEarth’s trustees. They join the producer Brian Eno as well as the MP and former editor of the Ecologist Zac Goldsmith as patrons of the organisation. James Thornton, ClientEarth’s CEO, welcomed Coldplay as patrons, saying: “To have one of the world’s most successful groups supporting our work is absolutely fantastic. Coldplay have long been strong advocates for environmental issues, and we are extremely pleased that they will continue to speak out for these most important of issues alongside us.”

http://www.facebook.com/ClientEarth

http://www.clientearth.org/

Glastonbury turns on solar array

The sun shone on the Glastonbury Festival site today as an excited crowd watched Festival Organiser Michael Eavis officially switch on Worthy Farm’s new solar electric array. Michael said: “We now not only do the best festival in the world, we also have the best solar power system.”

More than 1,100 solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof of the
“Mootel”cowshed can generate enough power for 80% of the farm’s electricity demand and export excess to the grid. Saving more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, the system is part of the festival’s environmental commitment to “Love The Farm – Leave No Trace”.

 

see the short film from the launch by Harriet Hoare and Mandy Briggs here http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/newsa-film-from-the-solar-launch

 

 

 

Facts and figures about the Worthy Farm solar photovoltaic system

•   The largest private solar electricity-generating system in the UK.

•   Generates enough electricity to meet the annual demand of 40 average households.

•   Helps combat climate change by saving about 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

•   The system, installed on the roof of Worthy Farm’s cow shed, contains more than 1,100 solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

•   The PV modules generate direct current electricity which is converted into alternating current by two large inverters. The power can then either be used in Worthy Farm’s buildings, or, when there is more supply than demand, exported to the grid.

•   With the benefit of the government’s new feed-in tariff for renewable energy, the payback time for the system is expected to be about nine years. The system is designed to keep operating for at least 20 years.

•   The installation was organised by Solarsense, based in Bristol.  The modules were manufactured by Romag in County Durham.  The grid connection was provided by Western Power Distribution.  The inverters have been supplied by Swiss company Sputnik Engineering.   A loan to enable the project to proceed was made available by Triodos Bank.

•   This is the latest initiative by Glastonbury Festival to reduce its environmental impact under the banner of “Love The Farm – Leave No Trace”. More details at www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk .

Photo: (c) 2010 Matt Cardy. Used with kind permission.

Green Events Germany a Big Success

The Green Events Conference in Bonn has been hailed as a big success with 80 delegates  on hand to discuss sustainability and environmental protection at live events.  The promoters of the 180,000 capacity RhEINKULTUR festival in Bonn set up the first GreenEvents conference. As one of the leaders of the green movement in the European festival scene, and the organising team of Sabine Funk and Holger Jan Schmidt were able to welcome guests, experts and speakers with international reputations on the 3rd and 4th of November at the Wissenschaftszentrum, Bonn – and the two day symposium allowed a really deep exploration of the subjects on the agenda which included ” Mobility management”, “Green Marketing”, “Carbon Reduction” and “Sustainability Management for beginners” among others. Apart from RhEINKULTUR, other major events which sent representatives included Wacken Open Air (80.000 visitors, Ger), Pinkpop (60.000 visitors, Ned), Skanderborg Festival (60.000 visitors, Den) and Open Air St.Gallen (30.000 visitors, Switzerland). Other huge admission free events such as U&D Würzburg and the Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin registered for GreenEvents and delegates were able to take home a wealth of information and important new contacts.  There delegates included visitors from Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Austria and even Australia at GreenEvents.

GreenEvents Germany was supported and financed by the European Regional Development Font, by the city of Bonn, and the council government of Nordrhein-Westfalen. The conference wouldn’t have been possible without the essencial financial support of the Foundation for iInternational Dialogue of the Savings Bank in Bonn. Additional and important partners were the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the European festival association Yourope (www.yourope.org).

“We are happy to have made a first step towards greener events. I think we have moved conciousness and ethusiasm alike. I think this is a wonderful basis and I am sure we can build up on this at a second and third conference.” said Holger Jan Schmidt, Co-MD and owner of the promoting agency BN*PD – Bonn Promotion Department together with associate Sabine Funk.   Professor Ben Challis, co-founder of the highly acclaimed agreenerfestival.com said “Green Events Germany has established itself as a true pan-European movement, bringing together event organisers from accross the music industry who wish to implement and improve green policies and environmentally friendly practices. With representatives from festivals, event organisers and suppliers from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, Green Events Germany provided a timely reminder of the need to move to a low carbon future as soon as possible, and the key position of the music industry has in promoting change”   Teresa Moore Head of Music and Events Management at Buckinghamshire  New University (UK) which co-hosted the event and a conference contributor said, “We were delighted to be asked to partner in this first Green Events conference here in Bonn,  particularly as it builds on the  environmental conferences we run at the University. The two days has been hugely successful bringing together audience and speakers not only from  festivals but also from the wider corporate and sports sectors of the events industry.”  

Catherine Langabeer, from Julie’s Bicycle (UK) said “It was a good sign that on arriving at Bonn train station for Green Events Germany, the taxi driver who took me to my hotel pointed out the IPCC offices, and turned out to be a contributor to the local Bonn Environment Paper! From this promising start, the conference itself was an exciting opportunity not just to share experience but explore how we can challenge each other to exceed today’s expectations of what being ‘green’ means. Julie’s Bicycle was very pleased to be involved at this critical juncture in Green Events’ history, and looks forward to working closely with Green Events and its partners to further its ambitions in coming years” and Guido Axmann from the Green Music Initiative in Germany added “Sharing local experiences globally is absolutely crucial to win the fight against climate chance. Greener festivals will become a key driver in accelerating the transformation to a low carbon society. This first international conference was an essential milestone and the Green Music Initiative will fully support practical next steps for a better and greener festival culture.”

www.green-events-germany.eu

How green is your festival?

How Green Is Your Festival?  Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani writes that “most seasoned festival goers will be aware that inhabiting a large green field for a weekend (or more) has detrimental effects on the environment” but wondered in the age of greenwash, just how ‘green’ festivals really are.

http://www.dare2mag.com/00,news,14919,274,00.htm

CLIMATE WEEK 2011

Climate Week, on 21-27 March 2011, is a national occasion that offers an annual renewal of our ambition and confidence to combat climate change. It is for everyone wanting to do their bit to protect our planet and create a secure future.

Thousands of organisations will run events and activities highlighting solutions. They will use the power of real, practical examples to encourage thousands more to act during the rest of the year.

 

Update on the campaign

Climate Week has support from every part of society – from the Prime Minister to Paul McCartney, the NHS to the National Trust, Girlguiding UK to the CBI, the Big Lottery Fund to the National Association of Head Teachers, Premiership football clubs to the Met Office.

It is backed by the leaders of every major political party in the UK, by climate change experts such as Al Gore and Lord Stern, by faith groups from all of the UK’s main religions and by umbrella bodies representing over 850,000 organisations in sectors such as property, retail, food, freight, hospitality, farming, tourism, heating, lighting, transport and energy.

www.climateweek.com

Sustainable temporary power solutions

Bredenoord Aggregaten is a Dutch firm that is at the forefront of new developments in sustainable temporary energy systems. In the future Bredenoord wants to maintain and expand its position as market leader in North-West Europe. They recently exhibited their new hydrogen cell generators at the Glastonbury Festival in the UK and the Lowlands festival in Holland. Bredenoor are looking to develop a fully sustainable temporary mobile generator system and they are working on the development and application of completely different techniques than the current diesel units, including fuel cell technology (Purity and soon Uniflex)

Paul Schurink from Bredenoord gave a really interesting presentation at GREEN EVENTS GERMANY in early November in Bonn and explainend that to avoid having to wait for technological breakthroughs, Bredenoord are working on improving their existing diesel generators. Developments which have already been fully established include the integrated drip pan and super silent models. Recently “Clear Air” was added in this range and Bredenoord will start with the application of GTL diesel. Bredenoord have already started to replace conventional diesel generators with cleaner generators, with fuel firstly from gas and then from biomass, and this process means that Bredenoord has aims that by 2012 over half of their capacity will be ‘clean’. At the same time capacity from hydrogen fuel cells will be increased, so by 2030 Bredenoord expects that half their fleet will be clean diesel and half fuel cells, ultimately all moving towards 100% sustainable conversion technique fuel cells.

 

With the fuel cell power units Bredenoord, provides the most innovative ‘genset’ for the future. These gensets still have a very limited capacity and the costs of both the hardware (parts) and the hydrogen is still very high. This makes these applications well suited for demonstrations and exhibitions, but is currently not a real useful alternative for the diesel generator.

 

The application of Clear Air gensets, or in combination with the GTL diesel, are ideally suited for use in locations where there is a real commitment to care for the environment. These innovations by Bredenoord ensure that their customers feel comfortable in saying that they use the best possible, practicable and reliable temporary energy!

   

Bredenoord, together with partners such as Nedstack, is the first company to deploy hydrogen fuel cell technique for mobile energy generators. On the 15 August 2010 in the Netherlands  an entire floating stage at Lowlands Festival was  supplied by sustainable energy. The Llowlab-islands obtain their full energy supply from the hydrogen generator Purity and for this festival Bredenoord, together with its partners, developed a second Purity, that has over three times as much capacity as the earlier model. Alredy in Germany, Denmark and Great Britain there is a demand for sustainable energy during events and Earlier this Summer, Bredenoord used its sustainable technique for part of the energy supply at the Glastonbury Festival and at three smaller festivals in the London environment.

The latest Purity model has a capacity of  17,5 kVA, more than sufficient to provide the entire Llowlab with energy. The smallest version of the Purity, with a capacity of 5kW, has been operational at Glastonbury 2010, with the specific task of functioning as a supplement for the solar power generators. Inside the extremely silent fuel cell generator an electro-chemical reaction takes place between hydrogen and oxygen from the air. This process only releases heat and clean water; so no emission of soot and particulate matter! This makes the Purity an important option for a sustainable future of events. 

Bredenoord is a family concern that has been involved in the rental, sales and production of mobile energy for over 70 years. In addition to the Purity line, the company has, amongst others, also developed the Clear Air, a filter that reduces soot emission by 99%,and complete biogas CHP’s (combined heat and power) .Thus the customer has the choice of mobile energy from different fuel types and with different types of emission. This Spring Bredenoord won the prestigious European Rental Award, thanks to its management and its innovating initiatives.  

www.bredenoord.com.

BETTER FESTIVAL GROUP TACKLE TENTS

The Better Festival Group have sent us their 2010 Post Festival Season Newsletter and we were very interested in news about The BIG Tent Recycle which they have put in place with a number of festivals to divert discarded camping equipment from landfill.  A public report with pictures will be on the website in due course at www.thebetterfestivalgroup.co.uk. At Wakestock 2010 the BIG Tent Recycle was a resounding success.  It was the campaign’s pilot year, but BFG say that “everyone really got into the spirit of things and had a great time.  We diverted 277 items (780.18kg) of camping equipment from landfill and passed it onto local Scouts, a local canoe club and Homeless Charity Shelter Cymru”. BFG were also at Sonisphere 2010 and said “Sonisphere was our biggest challenge of 2010.  Not only did we have a volunteer team covering campsite hubs and main information we also ran The BIG Tent Recycle.  Everything ran really smoothly throughout this event and The BIG Tent Recycle diverted 365 items (1116.32kg) of camping equipment from landfill and passed it onto local Scouts, St Mungos Charity, Goodone and a lady who makes bags from recycled material.”

Another Planet

Edie.Net has provided a neat summary of some of the fall-out from Chancellor George Osborne’s spending cuts. The Department for Energy and Climate Change suffered an overall annual cut in budget of 5% but announcements on the future funding for a Green Bank and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) were not all bad with Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, succeeded in securing £1 billion for carbon capture technology and another £1 billion investment in a Green Bank. Other announcements included a £200 million funding for wind power development. New incentives were also announced, including a funded Renewable Heat Incentive to encourage home energy efficiency with no upfront cost to homeowners but this also meant a phasing out of the Warm Front programme.  Environmental groups will digest the news and reflect on what this means in the face of huge cuts for welfare, councils and the police, with a total of £81 billion cut from public spending

Caroline Spelman, the UK’s Environment Secretary, is expected to announce that the UK Government plans to sell off 150,000 hectares of forests and woodland that it owns, to property developers, large land owners and international companies. Cripes, firesales are always useless (Gordon Brown sold off all our gold on the cheap) but this one looks ridiculous. Still, only a rumour. But if it is ridiculously cheap and we imagine it will be (and probably cost almost as much to sell in ‘consultant’s fees’) - we would like to buy some please – especially at bargain basement prices – so – now we’ve said it publicly! Onwards with Festival Wood and maybe Festival Forest!

The UK Government’s efforts to cut the budget deficit mean that rail commuters on some lines will face fare rises of 11% as part of plans to reduce the annual rail budget of £5 billion. Ouch!

South Africa has announced it is making plans to shift from reliance on coal based electricity generation to solar power –by building the world’s biggest solar power plant. The Government hopes the move will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – South Africa is 90% dependent on coal for power.

Soaring food prices and shortages could cause instability in many poorer countries as the cost of stable food and vegetables has reached its highest level for two years. Global wheat and maize prices have jumped 30% recently whilst meat is at a 20 year high as are the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread and sugar in Pakistan. Wheat prices have been forced upwards by the dramatic drought in Russia and a 5.5% reduction in global wheat production, but there is continuing concerns about the volatility in prices on the world market brought on by the economic recession, food price speculation and a reduction in food production brought on by urbanisation and turning and over to agrofuels.

“Eco guilt” is the new buzzword for gadgets as two thirds of consumers believe that the electronics industry is not doing enough to tackle the environmental damage they cause. Manufacturers are being told to do more to get green as consumers look for positive action – and also make sure consumers are aware of their environmental efforts. Research shows that 58% of shoppers look for more environmentally friendly products.