Green Guardians: Resource management
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 food & drink.
Ball Aluminium Cup
With its infinitely recyclable aluminium cups, Ball Corporation has signed a number of deals to supply the product line to events, including the 2020 Superbowl in Miami and PGA’s Waste Management Phoenix Open, effectively replacing millions of single-use plastic cups.
Durable, cool to the touch and extremely eco-friendly, extensive research on both sides of the Atlantic claims that consumers believe a venue that serves beverages in aluminium cups cares about the environment and that the drinking experience at that venue would be higher quality/better than other unrecyclable formats currently on offer.
Ball Corporation says that aluminium can be recycled infinitely without ever losing quality. In fact, it cites research that suggests that nearly 75% of all aluminium ever made is still in use today.
The cups can easily be made (minimum order of 50,000 applies) with custom logos and graphics to correspond with venues, events, teams, brands and more. Additionally, Ball’s drinking vessels are sturdier and more durable than other options, reducing breakage incidents and increasing quality perceptions.
EAP launched Love Your Tent, a campaign designed to encourage people to reuse them instead of discarding them
Eco Action Partnership
Waste is a key issue that the festival community needs to tackle head-on, particularly the ongoing problem of discarded tents and camping equipment left behind at the end of most camping festivals, creating one of the biggest environmental issues facing organisers.
With this in mind, Eco Action Partnership (EAP) launched Love Your Tent, a campaign designed to bond people with their portable homes and encourage them to reuse them instead of discarding them.
The organisation’s aim is to publicise the issue and create some solid solutions for change that will benefit the whole of the festival community.
Rick Storey, who helped initiate the campaign, explains, “We are determined to make festivals greener, more sustainable, and more enjoyable events for audiences and organisers, and one way of doing that is to cut down on the number of discarded tents. This can’t be done in solus, it needs to happen across the festival community and should involve tent retailers, festivalgoers and organisers.”
As part of its range of services, EAP also conducts carbon audits for events and businesses, helping to pinpoint where the main impacts are.
Greenbox offers a unique and forward-thinking approach to event waste management
Greenbox Events
Based in Bristol, UK, waste and recycling specialist Greenbox offers a unique and forward-thinking approach to event waste management. It pioneers the most sustainable strategies whilst keeping events clean, tidy and safe.
The Greenbox team builds on a wealth of experience that dates back to the mid-90s when recycling was first taking a foothold in the events industry. Its specially designed, distinctive and robust recycling stations are renowned for their ease of use and high recycling yield.
The company maintains that it’s what you don’t see that’s most important; through strategic deployment of its teams Greenbox tackles cleansing issues before they become a problem.
Greenbox operates throughout the UK, frequently in remote areas with limited or difficult access, as well as busy city centres, and at high-profile sporting events. It provides all the necessary vehicles, personnel, equipment and expertise to ensure events are cleaned efficiently, professionally and more sustainably.
Pitched for You is forming pacts to deliver mass accommodation smoothly in one package
Pitched for You
In 2021, Pitched for You has been delivering initial contracts, taking on crew and forming important relationships within the industry. As a supplier, the company took on every event it could, only to have half cancel and others pop up out of the blue with requests like isolation camps, glamp sites or a restaurant on a cliff.
As a B2B accommodation supplier, Pitched for You is forming pacts with ticket sellers, green travel companies, event assessors and production companies to deliver mass accommodation smoothly in one package.
Although determined to develop a real circular economy service, on the product side materials remain a great challenge, as there are simply no circular economy tent fabrics, yet. So the company is working with Nikwax to help develop these, finding that the correct fibres, coatings and maintenance techniques can make its material last “forever.”
On the service side, Pitched For You took advice from Aston Business School’s Advanced Services Group to ensure its business model is truly sustainable. While on the manufacturing side, Covid is presenting all sorts of international trade issues, so the company is considering moving manufacture entirely to the UK.
OVG is leading the development and operations of the Climate Pledge Arena, the first net-zero carbon arena
Oak View Group
With a mission to innovate and improve the live venue experience, Oak View Group (OVG) is leading the development and operations of the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, which it says will be the first net-zero carbon arena in the world.
OVG believes the new building will be the most sustainable arena venue in the world, serving as a long-lasting and regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action.
Among the multiple strategies the company is relying on to achieve its goals, it has committed to no fossil fuel consumption in the arena for daily use; it will use an extensive solar panel installation combined with off-site supplementary renewable energy for 100% renewable energy power; and it will offset any carbon emission activities it cannot eliminate – like transportation – by purchasing credible carbon offsets.
Other initiatives include a sustainable food and beverage strategy, ensuring that 75% of all produce is sourced within a 300-mile range. Additionally, the arena will have a zero single-use plastic policy, advanced water conservation measures, and by simplifying its supply chain OVG will target a zero-waste goal.
The new arena, which opens in October, will be used to inform future OVG developments including UBS Arena in New York; Moody Center in Austin, Texas; Co-op Live Arena in Manchester, UK; Coachella Valley Arena, California; and new projects in Savannah, Georgia and Milan, Italy.
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Green Guardians: Resource management
The Green Guardians Guide, spearheaded by the Green Events and Innovations Conference and IQ Magazine, is a new yearly initiative highlighting some of the work being done around the world to reduce the carbon footprint of the live entertainment business.
The inaugural list, which originally ran in IQ 90, features 60 entries across ten categories, selected by the Green Guardians committee, which includes representatives from some of the sector’s most respected bodies, such as A Greener Festival, Go Group, Green Music Initiative, Julie’s Bicycle and Vision:2025.
Following on from last week’s feature on the companies providing PR and marketing initiatives, this edition of Green Guardians looks at how to turn one man’s trash into another man’s treasure.
Resource management
Pitched for You
Both the circular economy and the mantra “cradle to cradle” (as opposed to “cradle to grave”) are what drive Pitched For You, which, in a nutshell, hires ready-pitched tents to festival fans.
During a trip to Africa, recycling fanatic Kieran vanden Bosch was inspired by how many things the local people reused and repurposed, and so on his return to the UK in 2008, he started Transition Resource as a Transition Town group based in Glastonbury.
Under that banner, he set about picking up rubbish and trying to make useful things out of it, in the hope of turning rubbish into resource by creating a need for it.
“I found a lot of tents left at festivals and started Camplight in 2012,” says the serial entrepreneur. “I soon realised Camplight could never actually fully change the problem at large, so that’s why I’ve started Pitched for You, which I’m now trying to find funding for.”
During a trip to Africa, Kieran vanden Bosch was inspired by how many things the local people reused and repurposed
Mepex
Mepex is a Norwegian consulting company that specialises in waste management and recycling. With almost 30 years of experience, Mepex has acquired a unique knowledge base.
Combined with a solid international network and good digital tools, it ensures its clients’ resource-efficient solutions enable them to achieve their environmental goals.
Mepex has a long list of ongoing and completed assignments for both the public and private sectors. It is an independent company run by partners and has 16 employees, located in the centre of Asker.
Those employees have a solid knowledge base and extensive expertise in the fields of waste management and recycling, allowing Mepex to embark on projects for different types of client groups, throughout the waste pyramid – and along the entire value chain for all types of products and materials.
With a strong background in waste management and recycling, Mepex offers a vast array of services including analyses; strategies and measures; implementation; and new circular concepts.
Mepex ensures its clients’ resource-efficient solutions enable them to achieve their environmental goals
Grist Environmental
For those organising a public or private event, Devizes, UK-based Grist Environmental can ensure that it is clean, safe and environmentally responsible.
The company’s specialist event services team is experienced, flexible and unobtrusive. It ensures that all waste is recycled and recovered from events at its specialist materials recovery facility, resulting in zero waste going to landfill.
Grist’s employees regularly manage waste solutions at events ranging from 30,000 revellers at a week-long festival to village fetes for a few hundred people at local, regional and national levels.
From the set-up to the breakdown of an event, the company can provide experienced and committed staff as well as flexible and reliable equipment hire. This ensures excellent customer satisfaction and site cleanliness for the duration.
Supplying a wide range of high-quality, customer-focused waste management packages, Grist’s services are tailored to meet specific client needs and can include everything from litter picking teams and corporate hospitality staff, to portable event toilets and fencing and crowd control barriers.
Grist’s services include litter picking teams, corporate hospitality staff, portable event toilets, fencing and crowd control
Tutaka
Describing itself as a “go-to source for sustainable hospitality,” Tutaka makes sustainable procurement easy by relieving buyers from the hotel, restaurant and event industry of the complex task of searching.
“In our marketplace, numerous audited products and services can be directly acquired. This saves time and brings products into the operations that inspire guests and employees alike,” it states.
The Tutaka platform features such varied products as upcycled, PET, hotel slippers, soap dispensers, aprons from recycled PET, edible spoons, straws made from straw and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has even sourced ranges of sustainable face masks.
For events and festival organisers, Hamburg-based Tutaka carries links for items such as F&B tokens made from wood cut-offs, organic cotton festival bracelets, recycled polyester wristbands and rentable lanyards.
On a larger scale, it brokers deals for the likes of sustainable festival toilet blocks, solar phone-charging stations, cardboard trash-cans and even cardboard tents.
The Tutaka platform features products such as edible spoons, straws made from straw, and even sustainable face masks
Ecofest
Ecofest is a Belgian, not-for-profit organisation that is constantly searching for more sustainable solutions for the event sector. It combines knowledge of circularity and sustainability with hands-on waste management at events.
Ecofest supports event organisers in its implementation of green measures by analysing the current situation, presenting a trajectory of solutions, and making the link between organisation and potential suppliers.
While Ecofest specialises in working with reusable cups and waste sorting, it also investigates possibilities within the whole range of environmental issues – waste, energy, catering, mobility, etc. The organisation’s aim is to raise awareness and change the behaviour of event visitors, organisers and suppliers.
It shares its practical experience through workshops, lectures and “how to” documents. To date, Ecofest has worked with several Belgian festivals, dance events and local authorities including the City of Antwerp and the Flemish waste administration, OVAM.
The organisation’s aim is to raise awareness and change the behaviour of event visitors, organisers and suppliers
Green Box Events
Based in Bristol, UK, waste and recycling specialist Greenbox offers a unique and forward-thinking approach to events waste management. It pioneers the most sustainable strategies whilst keeping events clean, tidy and safe.
The Greenbox team builds on a wealth of experience that dates back to the mid-90s when recycling was first taking a foothold in the events industry. Its specially designed, distinctive and robust recycling stations are renowned for their ease of use and high recycling yield.
The company maintains that it’s what you don’t see that’s most important; through strategic deployment of its teams, Greenbox tackles cleansing issues before they become a problem.
Greenbox operates throughout the UK, frequently in remote areas with limited and difficult access, as well as busy city centres and at high-profile sporting events.
It provides all the necessary vehicles, personnel, equipment and expertise to ensure events are cleaned efficiently, professionally and more sustainably.
The company maintains that it’s what you don’t see that’s most important
Festovers
Festovers’ ethos is to look at all avenues to create a circular economy, which currently translates as upcycling for reuse. Environmentalism has been at the core of Festovers from the start, as the whole idea involves trying to create a more sustainable festival/ events industry.
Festovers’ main work in 2019 was with Truck Festival in Oxfordshire where it managed to collect over 85% of the leftover tents, all to be upcycled.
Every year, more than 95% of leftover festival tents end up in landfill/incinerators. Festovers wants to work with major festivals across the sector to massively reduce that number.
Thanks to Festovers’ hard work, festivals can make a massive dent in their waste. With a good social media presence, the company is also offering a positive impact to the audience, as it educates about tent waste and tries to encourage people to take their tents home.
Festovers founder Thomas Panton says, “Don’t be afraid to make a big change. The future needs big changes, and sometimes leading the way is the best thing an event/ festival or even an individual can do.”
Continue reading this feature in the digital edition of IQ 90, or subscribe to the magazine here
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