Green Guardians: Water & Sanitation
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 power.
Frank Water
Frank Water CIC is a social enterprise that raises funds for the charity’s safe water projects overseas and helps inspire the UK (and beyond) to adopt a more sustainable approach to water.
The organisation has a diverse portfolio of services and products that help support the charity financially, whilst promoting its ethos of sustainability. For example, its festival refill service enables festivals to substantially reduce levels of plastic waste. During 2020, this service was obviously impacted by Covid-19, but Frank is back on the festival circuit in 2021, at the likes of Green Man, End of the Road, TankFest and Beautiful Days.
As well as supporting the charity’s emergency response to Covid-19 in India and Nepal, the organisation spent time during the pandemic developing its UK education programme and designing a new look for its range of glass-bottled spring water, because while it stresses that tap water is always best, Frank wants to give consumers an ethical, sustainable choice.
Looking to the future and further developing its work around global water stewardship, Frank Water has also created a tech platform, WASH Connect, which consists of a suite of digital tools and applications to support brands and companies to develop and deliver their water stewardship programmes and manage the risks to water security in their supply chain.
ECOZ Mobile has already been spotted at Belgian festivals such as Paradise City and Dranouter
Hello Water
In recent years, it has become clear that the tipping point for climate change is approaching, especially when it comes to water. Water is not a single-use commodity and shouldn’t be treated like one.
With this in mind, I-QUA started ECOZ Mobile, its pilot project for mobile water treatment at events, offering local water sanitation and striving to make water treatment systems circular. Wastewater goes in, clear water comes out. It’s that easy. Say goodbye to brown gunk and hello to clear water!
ECOZ Mobile has already been spotted at Belgian festivals such as Paradise City and Dranouter – ideal opportunities to test how the project copes in challenging conditions. With 2020 being low on festivals, ECOZ founder Wouter Igodt used the opportunity to launch a new startup – Hello Water – whose aim is to help get the idea of environmentally friendly local water treatment out in the open, beyond festivals. The organisation’s motto is: “Where water flows, life grows.”
Not only are Nature Event’s composting toilets better for the environment but they provide a more pleasant experience
Natural Event
Having launched in 2000 with an alternative solution toilet, Natural Event Composting Toilet Systems is changing the world literally from the bottom up.
The company has designed and operates one of the most effective, practical, pleasant-to-use toilet systems for festivals, events and gatherings.
Natural Event was created after the organisers of The Festival of Folk, Rhythm and Life, Victoria, Australia, realised that the toilet system they had created to cater for their own three-day festival could easily be deployed nationally and internationally.
The company’s aim is to provide festivals and events with planet-friendly water usage systems that consume much less energy than the previous systems that involved transporting massive quantities of waste.
Not only are Nature Event’s composting toilets better for the environment but they provide a substantially more pleasant user experience, producing no smell, even in the blistering Australian sun, five days into a huge camping festival. All hail the pong-less bog.
Ideal for large crowds with multiuser safe access, O’land’s stainless-steel stations are beautiful and ecological
O’land fill & wash stations
Since losing all event contracts in March 2020, management of The Green Stop decided to rebrand the company changing its name to O’land, and made their fill-and-wash stations safer in terms of hygiene and safe distancing.
The organisation has maintained its mission of eliminating waste from single-use plastics, by improving its bottle refill solutions and providing hand-wash and sink facilities.
Ideal for large crowds with multiuser safe access, O’land’s 360-degree-designed stainless-steel stations are both beautiful and ecological – making them attractive for sponsorship and branding opportunities.
In addition, O’land’s near-real-time antennas record daily water usage so that analysts can easily document the number of bottles refilled and plastic waste saved.
Osheaga Play allows festivalgoers to trade in plastic water bottles and see them get recycled into special-edition T-shirts
Osheaga
Over the years, Osheaga has implemented multiple sustainability initiatives to ensure that its operations are responsible. Beyond the artistic and cultural experience, the festival wants to minimise the negative impact it has on the environment and maximise the positive influence it has on society and the economy.
Its Water for Everyone programme in partnership with National Bank has helped provide Osheaga with more than 31,500 litres of drinking water, 14 additional water-refill stations, and 9,000 reusable water bottles. Additionally, Osheaga Play (powered by National Bank) allows festivalgoers to trade in plastic water bottles and see them get recycled into special-edition Osheaga T-shirts.
In 2018, Osheaga enacted a ban on plastic straws, it has been using reusable eco-cups in onsite concessions for over five years, and in 2019, the festival’s Perrier tent implemented more environmentally friendly paper cups.
The event continually examines its practices with water and waste to ensure it is doing everything it can to improve its sustainability credentials.
In recognition of those efforts, Osheaga has achieved level 2 of the Standard BNQ (Bureau de normalisation du Québec) 9700-253 for responsible event management, delivered by Modus Operandi Logistiques.
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Green Guardians: Water & Sanitation
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 transport and travel, this edition of Green Guardians looks at how we can avoid treating water as a single-use commodity.
Water & Sanitation
Goldeimer
Goldeimer’s aim is that every single person on the planet will have access to secure sanitation. As there are currently 4.2 billion people that don’t, 100% of Goldeimer’s profits are used to support United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6: clean water and sanitation.
The organisation’s toilet paper is made from 100% waste paper, contributing to the protection of primeval forests in South America, Russia and Scandinavia. In addition to safeguarding biodiversity in these forests, this reduces environmental pollution through long transport routes, whilst saving a lot of water and energy.
However, Goldeimer doesn’t just sell toilet paper. Every year the company’s task force of more than 200 volunteers takes 80 Goldeimer compost toilets to many festivals in Germany, where they can educate festival attendees and provide a sustainable alternative to regular sanitary facilities, without the use of water or chemicals.
In this way, the company saves around 1.6 million litres of water per season that would have been used by regular flushing toilets, and generates 15 tons of nutrient-rich soil from 40 tons of festival faeces.
The company saves around 1.6 million litres of water per season that would have been used by regular flushing toilets
Join the Pipe
Describing itself as the first social network of tap-water drinkers, Join the Pipe says more and more people are getting on board with its dream of redistributing drinking water worldwide in a fair way, whilst tackling plastic waste at the source.
Join the Pipe is realising this dream with its reusable water bottles and refill stations, and states that every bottle forms a part of the longest water pipe in the world: long enough to bring water to all of those without it.
By using reusable/multiuse bottles, Join the Pipe can reduce the amount of waste from single-use plastic water bottles. Its bottles are produced in the Netherlands, and are BPA free and dishwasher-proof. They come in a range of colours and can be printed with a logo or text.
Join the Pipe’s refill stations deliver sustainable tap water and can be installed both indoors and outdoors. The stations have been developed in collaboration with Dutch water companies, are made of stainless steel 316 and are vandal-proof.
Join the Pipe’s refill stations deliver sustainable tap water and can be installed both indoors and outdoors
Bosaq
In 2011, Jacob Bossaer was asked to design the water treatment system in the Princess Elizabeth polar research station in Antarctica.
During the four seasons he spent on one of the harshest terrains on the planet, he realised that if it was possible to manage water in a sustainable way in such a remote place, then it must be possible everywhere.
Upon returning to Belgium, he set about finding other engineers with whom he could share his vision of supplying the world with sustainable, clean water.
Bosaq was founded in 2015, and from the outset developed products and services that are in line with the circular economy.
The operation now consists of four main parts: off-grid systems (the technology); a consulting firm (the Water Experts); premium water; and a social purpose (Water Heroes) whose remit is to provide solutions for everyone who needs water.
Bosaq was founded in 2015, and from the outset developed products and services that are in line with the circular economy
Frank Water
Frank Water began after social entrepreneur Katie Alcott discovered that she had contracted dysentery from drinking dirty water. Since 2005, Frank Water has funded safe drinking water and sanitation for nearly 400,000 people in 549 communities.
It aims to provide safe drinking water to the 663 million people worldwide who still lack access to this basic human right.
Summer 2019 saw 182 volunteers serve more than 169,000 refills of chilled, filtered water at 15 UK music festivals, potentially saving the same number of single-use plastic bottles from being sent to landfill or recycling.
The Festival Refill Service serves unlimited refills of filtered, chilled water to people who purchase a refillable water bottle or Frank Water wristband.
The range includes a 500ml BPA-free hardwearing plastic bottle, and stainless steel bottles in 532ml and 800ml sizes. Festival-goers can refill throughout the festival from one of the fixed Refill marquees or from roaming Frank Tanks!
Since 2005, Frank Water has funded safe drinking water and sanitation for nearly 400,000 people in 549 communities
The Green Stop
It was an oceanic expedition and the disposal of single-use plastic in the sea that gave birth to the concept of The Green Stop, an organisation dedicated to the protection and preservation of the planet.
Last summer, the organisation’s bottle refill installations were present at four events, the most notable of which was Osheaga Festival, where it became the event’s official water fountain service.
Additionally, the business model has pivoted for summer 2020 in order to provide hand-washing stations, thus reducing the amount of waste from plastic gloves.
The Green Stop has developed a hand-washing station that allows people to clean their hands using a touch-less faucet, while maintaining an appropriate social distance.
Over four events in 2019, The Green Stop mitigated the use of 140,000 plastic water bottles and 940 plastic trash bags. Events, artists and crew were able to see first-hand the positives of an eco-friendly music festival.
The Green Stop has developed a hand-washing station that allows people to clean their hands using a touch-less faucet
Ecoz
The Ecoz story started ten years ago, and its main aim has always been to do things differently.
In recent years it has become clear that “the inconvenient truth” is quickly becoming a reality, not least in the field of water supply. Water is not a single-use commodity!
The team at Ecoz Mobile is committed to tackling a worldwide problem with regional solutions. The company offers local water-sanitation and strives to make water systems “circular.”
Working at music festivals has given Ecoz Mobile a tremendous platform to reach a very wide audience (festival-goers, press, national and international TV), which has helped boost the company’s credibility and has helped create awareness amongst festival audiences.
“Implementing Ecoz Mobile at festivals has allowed us to road-test our system in very challenging situations. We’ve acquired a lot of data to work with in the future and that we can convert into solutions for everyday use,” says the company’s Wouter Igodt.
“We’ve acquired a lot of data to work with in the future and that we can convert into solutions for everyday use”
Mobile Sanitary Solutions
Mobile Sanitary Solutions (MSS) products are designed with one eye on the environmental profit, whether it is on savings in water consumption (and even better, waste- water reduction), or the fact that most of its products are foldable and/or modular.
For example, it can ship sanitation for up to 10,000 people (POP UP3 vacuum toilets, UReo urinals and ReFresh handwash stations) on just one truck; or 48 ReBoost showers on one truck. And with international partners, MSS also saves on transportation costs by identifying the closest partner to the event venue.
The company has partners in Finland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Portugal, Spain, the United States, Canada and Japan, while it also has deals with companies in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Australia, New Zealand and others.
In addition to working at music events, MSS is increasingly involved in humanitarian and military services in refugee camps, disaster relief situations, campsites, and during the Covid-19 pandemic, in emergency hospitals around the world.
Continue reading this feature in the digital edition of IQ 90, or subscribe to the magazine here.
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