A Greener Festival Announces Its First Award Winners

LONDON (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — The team behind AGreenerFestival.com have announced some of the very first recipients of the Greener Festival Award.

Unveiled earlier this year, the Greener Festival Award, in keeping with the website's ethos, aims to promote greener practices and sustainability for the burgeoning Festival circuit and live music industry.

Festivals who completed the application, signed up to Greener Festival's A-Z of twenty six green pledges and passed muster with the AGF team's on-site visit so far include in no particular order:

Leicester's Summer Sundae Weekender
The Sunrise Celebration
Latitude Festival
Big Green Gathering
The Glastonbury Festival
Edinburgh Film Festival
The Glade
Big Session Festival

AGreenerFestival.com believes strongly in the continued progression and improvement of festivals towards a policy of ‘Leave No Trace’.

They have awarded Download Festival a ‘Most Improved’ Award, recognising the efforts of the Festival to move from a particularly ‘un-green’ event in 2006 towards a far more sustainable site in 2007 with a pro-active management team and initiatives including on-site recycling, reduced paper use, bikes for staff and an much improved transport policy including lift sharing.

Over the recent months the AGF Team have been approached by festival organizers and media from around the world and the team have decided to recognize the exceptional work of the Bonnaroo Festival in the USA and Peats Ridge Festival in Australia by giving them both International Awards.

Bonnaroo has site-wide recycling (250 tons in 2007), a solar powered stage, encourages the widespread use of bio-diesel and insists on biodegradable catering products. Peats Ridge has managed to reduce on-site waste to almost nothing with recycling, composting toilets, all festival power from sustainable sources, all printing on sugar cane by-product paper with friendly inks and reclaimed materials used for site decoration.

A Greener Festival's co-founder Claire O'Neill said "abandoned tents were a major problem in 2007. This year's rain and mud at many festivals coupled with tents selling for under £10 meant that many festival goers left behind their accommodation – with even the most organised festivals struggling to deal with thousands and thousands of tents.

A number of festivals trialed bio-diesel this year but there are continuing concerns about unsustainable palm oil plantations. Other issues are pollution and the carbon footprint from private cars at festivals – we are keen to push public transport and car sharing, and hope to see more local produce/suppliers being used by events in 2008, not only to reduce mileage but to help benefit local economies"

The logo for the award is based on a drawing of the red kite, milvus milvus, a threatened bird of prey recently reintroduced into England and Scotland from Wales and continental Europe where it survived near extinction.

The awards will be made at the UK Festival Awards on November 6th 2007 in London