Green Guardians 2023: Big Green Coach, Biopak, ZAP
Welcome to the first part of IQ Magazine’s 2023 Green Guardians – our annual recognition of those eco-warriors and innovators at the forefront of the battle to make the live entertainment industry more sustainable.
The Green Guardians is spearheaded by IQ and an international panel of sustainability experts to highlight and congratulate companies and organisations who are improving the live music business when it comes to being more environmentally friendly.
This year’s list of Green Guardians includes 20 entries across a wide range of event suppliers, campaigners, and solutions providers, all of whom are working tirelessly to reduce the carbon footprint of the live entertainment business.
One of the goals of the Green Guardians initiative is to point decision makers toward suppliers who can help them to improve their environmental credentials. We hope the products, services and initiatives profiled will make a meaningful contribution to cleaner concerts and festivals around the world in the years ahead…
Big Green Coach is the UK’s largest carbon-neutral event travel provider. The company prides itself on doing its part to tackle the environmental impact that travel has on the live events industry, and in 2022 alone, it balanced 824 tonnes of carbon through verified carbon standard ecosystem restoration and protection projects.
With audience travel accounting for almost 80% of carbon emissions for live events, it’s never been more important to think about travel choices. Coach travel is already the greenest option for eventgoers, taking cars off the road and using less land for parking.
Going further in their green efforts, Big Green Coach’s work with Cool Earth means they have now sponsored close to 2m sq.ft. of Amazon rainforest for ten years.
In 2022, all of their coach services were carbon neutral. Emissions for every return trip were worked out and then offset by investing in sustainability projects with Ecolibrium.
BioPak creates sustainable packaging that puts the planet first. They champion the transition to a circular economy with industry-leading products made from plants. BioPak’s product range is predominantly made from renewable materials and is certified compostable. Switching to BioPak packaging, in conjunction with a waste-collection service solution, enables businesses to divert their food and packaging waste from landfill and convert it into nutrient-rich compost. BioPak is dedicated to reducing consumption of fossil fuel-based plastic so future generations can grow and thrive in a better world.
BioPak is currently working on plans to provide a number of high-profile music festivals with plastic-free packaging and com- postable packaging solutions. As experts in food & drink packaging, BioPak is working with festivals’ sustainability teams to provide them with on-site composters, to help them dispose of packaging in the most environmentally friendly way. With the help of BioPak’s packaging impact calculations, they can then quantify the positive impact that these changes have made, identifying how much plastic has been avoided, and how much compost has been created in its place.
Green Producers Club provides a research-based climate tool, Green Producers Tool, tailored to multiple industries within the creative and culture sectors, that both measures emissions and facilitates reduction.
Since the launch last September, Green Producers Club now counts more than 130 organisations using the tool to ensure reductions in their events, festivals, and productions. Members are spread across Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. The Green Producers Club has offices in Oslo and Copenhagen and is planning to expand with offices in Stockholm, Helsinki and Reykjavik by the end of 2024.
The Club facilitates local support and hosts club meetings for members to ensure sharing of knowledge. These meetings are widely popular and are always packed with people and organisations eager to learn and exchange experiences.
The emission factors in the tool, now counting more than 1,500, are calculated by the acclaimed Cicero – Center for International Climate Research. Green Producers Club will continuously develop the tool according to member feedback, new technology and research, and aims to be the most cutting-edge, user-friendly tool in the market.
Greener Power Solutions has already powered multiple events across the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and Switzerland, and is expanding further. It can provide battery power to practically any location, from a single cabin up to the main stage of a music festival.
Greener’s batteries reduce an event’s carbon footprint, prevent local air pollution, eliminate noise, and save money compared to diesel generators – providing clean energy for all events, anywhere.
In April this year, the Dutch company expanded its operations into the United Kingdom with a new office in Bristol, where it is collaborating with rental partners to replace their diesel generators with batteries.
“No other supplier in the United Kingdom has a rental fleet of batteries with a power of more than 100 kVA”
“No other supplier in the United Kingdom has a rental fleet of batteries with a power of more than 100 kVA,” explains Greener CEO Dieter Castelein. “Greener will be the first to offer these services on a large scale. In the market, the demand for smaller hybrid units has already been proven, and it seems the time has come to work with larger battery systems.”
To achieve its ambitious growth targets and scale up from a capacity of 20MWh in 2023 to 60MWh by the end of 2025, Greener is focusing on emerging markets such as the EV charging market and the energy grid.
By replacing polluting diesel generators with its batteries, Greener has saved nearly 4m litres of diesel and 12m kg of CO2 emissions since its inception.
ZAP Concepts offers consultancy in energy and sustainability; specialising in energy assessment, measurement and logging, together with the design of optimal power supplies for live events through the use of its unique and internationally awarded Smart Power Plan.
As well as working for many internationally renowned festivals and events like Glastonbury, King Charles III Coronation Concert, Ultra Miami, The Ocean Race, Mysteryland, etc, the ZAP Concepts team also works for Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres Tour.
Having assessed the energy consumption of the show, together with Hope Solutions, Coldplay’s creatives and production, ZAP Concepts developed, together with Konik (UK) and Beck (DE), a unique mobile touring battery system.
With the important ongoing support of Coldplay’s touring production management, a ZAP team operates the mobile touring battery system on many of the European shows, contributing to a 47% reduction in direct CO2e emissions compared to Coldplay’s previous world tour.
- IQ will publish entries across all categories over the coming weeks. The full Green Guardians 2023 list appears in issue 122 of IQ Magazine.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
Green Guardians 2022: Big Green Coach, Bluewater, Christie Lites
The Green Guardians is spearheaded by IQ and an expert panel of sustainability experts to recognise suppliers who are improving the live music business when it comes to being more environmentally friendly.
Our international panel of judges this year includes representatives from A Greener Festival, Green Events & Innovations Conference, Greener Events, Green Operations Europe (Go-Group), Julie’s Bicycle, Le Réseau des Femmes en Environnement, Sustainable Event Alliance, Sustainable Event Solutions, Tour Production Group, and Vision:2025.
The 2022 list of Green Guardians includes 20 entries across a wide range of event suppliers and solutions providers, all of whom are working tirelessly to reduce the carbon footprint of the live entertainment business.
IQ will publish entries across all categories over the coming weeks, starting with Big Green Coach, Bluewater and Christie Lites.
Big Green Coach
Big Green Coach is the UK’s largest events travel company, operating coach services to music festivals, gigs, and sporting events. With audience travel accounting for almost 80% of carbon emissions of live events, it’s never been more important to think about travel choices. Coach travel is already the greenest option for eventgoers, taking cars off the road and using less land for parking.
Going further in their green efforts, Big Green Coach’s work with Cool Earth means they have now sponsored close to 2 million square foot of Amazon rainforest for ten years. In 2022, all of their coach services were carbon neutral. Emissions for every return trip were worked out and then offset by investing in sustainability projects with Ecolibrium.
Bluewater purifiers make water safer to drink without the chemical, plastic, and other contaminants found in tap water
Bluewater
Bluewater is a Swedish beverage company dedicated to bringing fresh, healthy water to people who believe that the best water is purified water produced at the point of consumption, either at home or publicly vended at an event or venue – not bottled in plastic and transported from faraway places.
Back in 2013, founder and CEO Bengt Rittri, a Swedish environment entrepreneur sickened by plastic waste ending up in landfill and the oceans, decided to put a little human ingenuity to work – combining patented SuperiorOsmosisTM technology and the will to change the way the world views water.
Today, Bluewater purifiers make water safer to drink – without the chemical, plastic, and other toxic contaminants found in tap water or floating around in single-use plastic water bottles. Bluewater purifiers, unique hydration stations, and sustainable bottles allow people to enjoy fresh, healthy water – at home, work, and on the go across Europe, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, the United States, and South Africa.
Bluewater also hydrates tens of thousands of fans at world-leading sporting, music, and other events, including the British Open, the Women’s Open, Cape Town Marathon, and many more. Bluewater has been honoured with a Fast Company World Changing Ideas award.
Christie Lites is committed to using green energy throughout its global locations
Christie Lites
Sustainability is woven into the fabric of the Christie Lites business. The company is committed to using green energy throughout its global locations, which includes premises across the United States and Canada, as well as the United Kingdom and Germany.
Safeguarding Christie Lites’ mission to develop every part of its business through the lens of sustainability, its new Nashville premises has been constructed with Carbon Cure Concrete – a material that captures approximately 23 pounds of carbon dioxide per cubic yard of concrete. This is achieved by converting CO2 in calcium carbonate, a mineral that is an effective carbon dioxide vault that will not release the gas at any point in the future.
This move augments Christie Lites existing sustainability strategies that it has been putting in place across its international operations, to ensure the company’s impact on the environment is actively reduced wherever possible.
See the full list of 2022 Green Guardians in IQ 114 here. The next edition of the Green Events & Innovations Conference will take place on Tuesday 28 February, more information here.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
Green Guardians: Travel & Transport
The Green Guardians Guide, spearheaded by the Green Events and Innovations Conference (GEI) and IQ Magazine, is a new yearly initiative boosting the profiles of those working at the forefront of sustainability, in the hope that it might also inspire others.
The 2021 list, which originally ran in IQ 103, includes 40 entries across eight categories, highlighting some of the organisations and individuals who are working so tirelessly to reduce the carbon footprint of the live entertainment business.
This year’s winners have been chosen by a judging panel that includes experts from A Greener Festival, Greener Events, Julie’s Bicycle, the Sustainability in Production Alliance, the Sustainable Event Council and the Tour Production Group.
IQ will publish entries across all categories over the coming weeks. Catch up on the previous instalment of the Green Guardians Guide which looks at resource management.
Big Green Coach
Big Green Coach (BGC) was established in 2009 by Danny Newby and Kevin Green to provide environmentally responsible transport options to live events.
Their environmental commitment goes further than just providing coach travel as a viable alternative to cars, as they plant trees for every coach transported to an event.
The company now provides coach travel and/or shuttle buses to most major festivals in the UK and Europe (Download, Creamfields, Boardmasters, Reading, Leeds, Parklife, Boomtown to name just a few in the UK; and the likes of Tomorrowland and Rock Werchter on the continent), as well as for most major UK tours.
BGC’s environmental commitment now extends to protecting five square feet of Amazonian Rainforest for ten years for every customer they transport to live events. This has resulted in millions of square feet being protected thanks to BGC customers.
From 2022, all the company’s services will be carbon neutral (this year their services for Camp Bestival, Creamfields, Isle of Wight Festival, Latitude, Leeds Festival, Reading Festival and Wireless were all carbon neutral). This is a significant step forward, as it involves approximately 2,000 coach journeys.
“Any offsetting scheme Global Motion offers has to be gold standard, delivering on all of its promises”
Global Motion
Entertainment freighting company Global Motion (GM) has been championing environmental solutions within the live music industry since long before the pandemic, however, during this time, the company says it found a captive audience.
GM’s managing director, Adam Hatton, has been vocal in the sustainability conversation since the Tour Production Group, a group of touring decision makers, formed in early 2020. GM encourages its clients to minimise, then neutralise.
Hatton says, “As a global population we need to establish how much carbon we can spend and then work out what we are prepared to spend it on. V8 engines might be out, but live performance is vital to the human experience; there’s no doubt touring will continue worldwide.
“Any offsetting scheme Global Motion offers has to be gold standard, delivering on all of its promises. To that end, we have partnered with DHL, the world’s largest freight forwarder. Owned by Deutsche Post, DHL’s scheme is subject to the highest scrutiny. Global Motion can now offer verified carbon neutralisation of the highest level on all of our tours through DHL’s proven system – a system currently utilised by Formula 1.”
Collaborating with the DCMS, Public Health England, AIF, and others, Tuned in Travel helped produce The Purple Guide
Tuned in Travel
The aim of Tuned in Travel is to find innovative solutions to the negative environmental impact of audience travel, which, on average, accounts for 60-80% of an event’s overall carbon footprint. Since 2013, the company has been working directly with event organisers to provide audiences with safe, reliable transport options, helping to reduce the number of vehicles taken to an event.
When the pandemic hit, the demand for passenger transport all but ceased. However, this did not deter Tuned in Travel from pushing forward with their green initiatives and goals to improve the industry. The company has continued to expand its UK-wide operator network; an expansion that allowed it to work with operators local to partnered events, helping to reduce dead mileage and fuel consumption on services.
Tuned in Travel continued to work closely with event organisers and industry specialists for 2021/22 events, still guaranteeing that they would offset 100% of the carbon emissions generated during their services through donations to Ecolibrium. Collaborating with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Public Health England, Association of Independent Festivals, and others, Tuned in Travel helped produce The Purple Guide Covid-19: a comprehensive guide for festivals in event planning and travel safety (click here to access the document).
Pieter Smit is offering customers the opportunity to use vehicles that rely on synthetic diesel fuel, made from waste materials
Pieter Smit
Despite the enormous impact that the coronavirus had on its daily business, Pieter Smit continues to improve its green credentials. Pre-planned investments in the group’s real estate included the company renovating a building in the Amsterdam area with a geothermal installation.
A storage hall was completely rebuilt with high-density insulation panels, and the long-term goal is to add solar panels to create a zero-emission building.
In Dortmund, Germany, the company is renovating an old industrial hall for rehearsals and small events, renewing the roof and windows with the best possible materials, and installing an air/water heat pump system.
The company is offering customers the opportunity to use vehicles that rely on synthetic diesel fuel, made from waste materials, for their projects.
Additionally, Pieter Smit has invested in E-cars (VW ID.3) for the use of office employees, while a number of Mercedes eVito vans have been acquired to bolster the group’s electric vehicle fleet, which, together with the extensive programme of solar panel installations, is a significant step toward reducing the company’s overall carbon footprint.
From the carbon footprint to set-up time, VeloConcerts’ professional stages are minimal where it counts
VeloConcerts
VeloConcerts’ aim is to explore the possibilities of the modern stage. Founder Jonas Skielboe knew he wanted to rethink the classical performance to include environmental awareness and modern mobility. The company has collaborated with industry professionals and artists to bring opera to the street and take rock out of the garage.
VeloConcert’s technical engineering combines a clean design with the compact transport of a professional sound system that doesn’t rely on an external power source. The stage is incredibly mobile thanks to the help of an e-bike motor that makes for easy and safe transport, uphill and down.
There’s no need for any tools and no risk of forgetting an important component. Packing and unpacking a stage that can host up to seven performers at once can be achieved in a matter of minutes.
VeloConcerts offers the fastest path to hosting a non-invasive event in any environment. From the carbon footprint to set-up time, their professional stages are minimal where it counts. Advanced e-bike technology allows musicians to arrive on the spot with a pristine sound system, ready to create new levels of interaction between performers and audiences alike.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.