In this month's Earth Day special newsletter: 

• Industry Green Leader Q&A with Philip Hellberg, Co-founder, SNNTG Festival. 
• Festival Waste & Materials 101: New industry briefing by Vision:2025 explaining regulations, contractor requirements, and what's new in dealing with plastics, furniture and vapes. 
• Join the towards Zero Waste Festivals project by sharing your Festival Waste Data. 
• Guest Blog: NCASS on working with caterers to make event food offerings more sustainable. 
• ecolibrium to publish new Green Travel and Transport Guide for Festivals and events; pre-register for the 2023 edition.
• Case study: How Event Production Show 2023 tackled waste and audience travel impacts. 
• EarthPercent: Earth Day campaign: Earth as Co-writer.
• Sustainable Suppliers: Arena invest in electric forklifts.
• Resource spotlight: Festivals as Social Innovation Incubators; report and toolkit.
• Case Study: SNNTG Festival cut audience travel emissions.
• Selected news, jobs, events and comment from across the live events industry and beyond.

Get in touch with your questions and suggestions at info@vision2025.org.uk

Philip Hellberg is one the founders of SNNTG; a not-for-profit that voluntarily organise the annual SNNTG festival and other events around Hanover, Germany. SNNTG aim to make art, culture and music tangible, and to work with local people and unconventional ideas to create unique event spaces. SNNTG's strategy for reducing car travel was recently featured in the Future Festival Tools 'Green Festival Stories'. You can read about Philip's journey in event sustainability in our monthly Q&A HERE and read the case study below. 

In March 2023, Désirée Messmer at OpenAir St. Gallen and SummerDays Festivals in Switzerland, shared her sustainability journey so far. 

Vision: 2025's recently launched Toward Zero Waste Festivals Report identified a knowledge gap amongst event organisers about waste regulations and what to ask contractors.

In response, the Vision: 2025 team have created the 'Festival Industry Materials and Waste Briefing,' published this week, which explains regulations, contractor requirements and new information about the UK plastics ban (2023), furniture classified as hazardous waste, and the new challenge of disposing of electronic vapes. Download the briefing HERE. 

In this month’s guest blog, Vision: 2025 Steering Group member, The Nationwide Caterers Association (NCASS), share some quick wins for festival and event organisers on working with caterers to make food offerings more sustainable; diverting edible food surplus to local charities instead of landfill, considering packaging materials, recycling, greener energy, food sourcing and menu choices to deliver more climate friendly solutions - and bringing the audience on the sustainable food journey by highlighting choices that are better for the planet. Read the guest blog HERE.

NCASS are keen to hear event organisers’ perspectives so they can support all traders to be successful in implementing sustainable practices: Contact NCASS with your ideas. 
Photo credit: Northwood Festival by Regine Vilhelmsborg

ecolibrium will publish the Green Travel & Transport Guide in May 2023 in line with new best practice and research to provide a better understanding of event-related travel and its impacts, and inspiration for changes that can be made to reduce these impacts.

This fourth edition of the guide is supported by Tuned in Travel, and will provide updated context and new case studies, recent advice, tools, plus expert input on positively influencing audience behaviour, with research from The Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST); and insight into the legislative context of the future of travel in the UK by Sustainability and Innovation Specialist, Amy Woodward.  PRE-REGISTER FOR YOUR COPY HERE 

Event Production Show 2023 (EPS23) took place at the ExCel Centre, London last month 1-2 March: From the outset of show planning the EPS team put sustainability practices forefront. 

By eliminating unnecessary waste, including removing printed assets onsite and all aisle carpeting, prioritising recycling, and a focus on engaging audiences in low carbon travel – and with the support of partners; Event Cycle, You.Smart.Thing and ecolibrium, EPS made great progress on the goals they had set for 2023. Read what they achieved in the full case study HERE

For Earthpercent x Earth Day this year 60+ artists passionate about the planet have donated an exclusive piece of music that you can now buy on Bandcamp to help raise funds for climate action.

Buy individual tracks for £1.99 or the full EarthPercent x Earth Day ‘23 Compilation Album for just £25. All the money raised (minus platform fees) goes towards supporting organisations on the forefront of fighting the climate crisis with EarthPercent.  Find out more at earthpercent.org.

Festivals are more than fun and music – they can serve as platforms for young innovators to implement their own ideas for the benefit of the entire society. But how can festivals and partner organizations collaborate to realize this potential? “FUSION – Festivals as Social Innovation Incubators”, an EU-funded partner project involving Roskilde Festival and the festival association YOUROPE, have created a set of tools to help festivals, organizations and young innovators to turn their ideas into reality.

The tools include a handbook full of inspiring cases from festivals across Europe, a comprehensive toolbox explaining how to organize projects at festivals, and alliances between experts from the fields of education, social innovation, youth work and festivals. Find out more HERE

SNNTG Festival, Germany (capacity 3,000) uses local infrastructure to reduce emissions from travel. To cut audience travel emissions, they provide information on how to get to the festival by bus, train and bike, and encourage these forms of travel over car travel. For guests arriving on bike, SNNTG provides cycling routes, offers a luggage shuttle and a joint bicycle arrival as a separate event. There is a free shuttle bus going to the festival site from the local train station for those without a bike. The festival does still offer car parking, but they have increased the prices to discourage arriving by car. Read the full case study on the Future Festival Tools website.

Our selected news picks from across the Live Events Industry and beyond, including jobs, blogs, reports and what the Vision: 2025 team have been watching, listening to, and reading this month:

Join Extinction Rebellion and Unite to Survive at 'The Big One' – a four day action from the 21st to the 24th April 2023, where people from all groups and movements, not just XR, will gather throughout Westminster HERE.

Julie’s Bicycle are seeking a skilled programme manager to lead on delivering key strands of the ACE partnership, working closely with their ACE Programme Lead. Find out more HERE.

Businesses encouraged to disclose plastics footprint through CDP for the first time, edie reports, HERE. 

EarthPercent launch 'Earth as your Co-writer' - campaign with artists which sees our planet credited with music royalties to raise funds for climate action HERE.

Government agency UK Sport has announced a strategy to make major sporting events net positive by 2040, in Access All Areas HERE.

New Forest Folk festival join grid for greener event power HERE.

Independent Spanish promoter Last Tour has become Europe’s first festival promoter to attain B Corp accreditation, in Access All Areas HERE. 

Bakers Basco's successful outdoor event campaign to recover equipment reached 13k in rescued bread/food baskets HERE.

Our newsletter reaches over 3,700 UK event professionals interested in sustainability. Send jobs, events, resources and articles to feature here to: info@vision2025.org.uk