DELIVERY SUSTAINABILITY
Making festivals greener - one cup at a time
Te move to sustainability is changing the look of modern music festivals
BY NEIL EVANS T
hink summer music fes- tivals. Tink crowds with arms outstretched, think big headliners, huge flags and spending a weekend
crammed into a tiny tent. But now there’s a new image you
can expect to see a lot more of – the “cup tower”. Te tower was a common sight
at TRNSMT last year - the popular music festival on Glasgow Green, brought to the city in 2017. Te weekend event came about fol- lowing a series of well-chronicled planning issues that put a halt to the iconic T in the Park, one of the UK’s longest-running camp- ing music festivals. Among the thousands of fans watching acts including Stormzy and George Ezra, tall columns of stacked empty beer cups could be seen snaking through the crowds, as festival goers headed back to the bar to claim their refunds on a deposit scheme. As festival goers traded in their
cups for a 10p deposit (as well as many hundreds they’d found discarded across the event site), over the course of the three days 169,000 cups were sent for recy- cling – instead of being dumped in landfill. Te cup-deposit scheme was
just one of many green initia- tives at the event by organiser DF Concerts & Events. Te promoter organises more than 900 concerts throughout Scotland each year and TRNSMT was the biggest test for its new ‘Green Nation’ charter. Single-use plastic bottles were
banned (except those which were highly recyclable). Instead, festival goers were encouraged to bring their own water bottles and fill them up from on-site taps. Food was served on compostable plates
and cutlery, and there were wide- spread recycling bins on display.
BUT THE MOST visible sign of Green Nation in action was the cup-deposit scheme, which not only promotes recycling, but reduces litter on site, making the event more enjoyable (and cutting back on some of the post-event clean up). Te scheme had already been used successfully at T in the
Park, but now, with the added focus on sustainability, it promises to be a much bigger deal in the future. Over the three days, 5.5 tonnes
of card and 2.6 tonnes of plastic were recycled – the organisers estimated they prevented nearly 5,000 plastic bottles of water from being distributed. And importantly, absolutely no waste was sent to landfill.
The “Cup Tower” – coming soon to a festival near you. Photograph: Euan Robertson
Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF
Concerts & Events, said: “We have a responsibility at a local gig or large-scale festival level to ensure sustainability is a massively impor- tant consideration when planning an event. “Last year’s TRNSMT festival was
our first large-scale opportunity to implement some key policies from the Green Nation charter, which we are very proud to be support- ing and delivering. We drastically reduced the amount of single-use plastic used by the festival and we’re incredibly pleased to say we achieved zero waste to landfill.”
THE GREEN NATION charter was launched last year by Live Nation Entertainment, the global events group which includes DF Concerts. Work is already underway to build on 2019’s success for this year’s TRNSMT and at other venues and events. Tis includes ensuring it meets the requirements of Glasgow City Council’s new plastic reduction strategy, which aims to completely rid the city of unnecessary plastics over the next decade. However, Ellis’s company is look-
ing well beyond waste. Tis includes using renewable power (aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030 “at the latest”); introducing more sustain- able transport options for fans; and focusing on food sourcing, with the potential for more plant-based alternatives to meat on offer at the event. Ellis said: “Sustainability is high
on our agenda and we only have one chance to get this right. We have set high expectations but, by taking action, we delivered results beyond our expectation at TRNSMT 2019. We will continue to collaborate and share what we have learned in order to deliver the Green Nation charter as quick as we can to nurture our natural world.” n
EVENTSBASE | SPRING 2020 | 55
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