In this month's Vision: 2025 newsletter: 

• Industry Green Leader Q&A with Esther Koshari, Paradise City Festival  
• Guest Blog: Selina Donald, Founder at The Bulb on a Circular Future for events 
• ecolibrium launch new Green Travel and Transport Guide for Festivals and events
• Powerful Thinking announces new look Board for low carbon event power 
• MDE launch updated Music Climate Pack 
• Sustainable Suppliers: Few's renewably-powered marquee cleaning machine 
• Resource spotlight: Festival Sustainability Impact Reports 
• Case Study: Future Festivals showcase Paradise City on tackling water pollution
• Case Study: Fusion Festival Tønder Festival supports local refugee asylum centres
• Missed Event Production Show 2023? You can now watch recorded sessions and listen to the podcast
• 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

Esther Koshari is sustainability manager and finance controller at Paradise City Festival, a 12,000-capacity event in a 90-hectare nature park in Brussels, which has delivered a range of innovative sustainbilitu solutions. Read about Esther's experience and ambitions HERE.

• Paradise City Festival recently featured in the Future Festival Tools  Green Festival Stories for keeping the onsite ponds from being polluted by treating grey and black water, read the case study.
• In April 2023, Philip Hellberg, Co-founder SNNTG Festival, Germany took our monthly Q&A. Read his answers HERE. 

In this month's guest blog, Selina Donald, founder of The Bulb consultancy, gives insight into the three principles that the event industry needs to create circular future: Designing out waste and pollution; keeping materials and products in use; and regenerating natural systems – and how she has put them to practice through her work on the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Ceremonies. Read Selina Donald's blog on the Vision: 2025 website.

The 8th edition Sustainable Event Summit returns to The Showman's Show, Weds 18th October 2023. Vision: 2025 brings the community of sustainable event organisers together for a series of workshops and panels to share the latest in sustainable practices, with practical advice and learnings from this summer’s shows.

Save the date to join the Summit for a free-to-access, programme, with expanded venue provided by T&L Marquees, after a standing-room-only success in 2022. 

Supported by The Showman's Show, and featuring the Green Supplier & Innovation Award live. Topics will include; Unpacking Food Sustainability, Climate Communication 101, Powering the Future, 'The Best of the Summer' festival case studies. Partners include: Julie's Bicycle, ecolibrium, AIF, AFO, NCASS and Power of Events. Media partners; Festival Insights, Standout Magazine, Access All Areas and Total Production International (TPi).

Does your company want to get involved? There are opportunities support the event and raise your profile by becoming a sponsor – contact graham@vision2025.org.uk or Download the Sponsorship Pack. 

The fourth edition of ecolibrium’s Green Travel Guide for Festivals and Events is now available, packed with new information, case studies, and future transport trends.

The guide has been updated in line with new best practice and research and provides expanded context on measuring travel impacts in line with the greenhouse gas protocol. With updated understanding of festival travel impacts, inspiration for changes that can be made to reduce impacts, and how to communicate initiatives and strategy to stakeholders, plus expert input on positively influencing audience behaviour and the future of travel in the UK. DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY HERE. 

Vision 2025 is supporting the recently launched Event Sustainability Live, taking place at ExCeL, 15th & 16th November. We will be curating two panels, to promote sustainable practices with information to help expand the sustainable events community. Find out more on the Event Sustainability Live website.

Enjoy audible versions of The Main Stage sessions from Event Production Show 2023, which took place at the ExCel Centre, London, 1-2 March. Find a full list of sessions on the Event Production website.

You can also watch the “Sustainable Solutions Now” panel which explores the immediate initiatives, solutions and practices available to reduce the environmental impact of events: with Vision: 2025 Steering Group Member, Graham Brown, Legacy Marketplace CEO, Abena Fairweather, Walk the Plank Sustainability Manager, Rebecca Whitman, ZAP Concerts Rob Scully and AEG Europe Sustainability Director Sam Booth.

Music Declares Emergency launch a new and updated version of their Music Climate Pack available to all via this link.

The pack offers information to those working in all areas of the music industry in how to make their business more sustainable and how to use their voice to support immediate action on the climate emergency. With contributions from professionals working across music, artists, and fans, the pack is a free resource to encourage everyone in the UK music community to play a part in continuing to drive positive change via music.

For more information on MDE's work visit www.musicdeclares.net or follow @musicdeclares on socials.

Last month we featured new project FUSION – Festivals as Social Innovation Incubators. Each month we'll feature a new case study from their handbook of Social Innovation Stories. 

Taste the World is a food stall at Tønder Festival, an international music festival in Southern Denmark (capacity 15,000). The stall is run by residents and employees of the local refugee asylum centres, who join the festival community as volunteers. Taste the World is a street-food concept offering dishes inspired by and representing the volunteers’ different cultures. All profits go towards social activities at the asylum centres. Read the full case study on the Fusion website. 

Festival organisers can use Sustainability Impact Reports to share their environmental and social strategy and benchmark the success of their initiatives and experiments. They are a chance to crunch the data and be transparent on impact with stakeholders; audience, artists, suppliers, crew and artists - as well as a chance to inspire other events to start taking action. We've made a list of some recent reports to provide inspiration:

• Shambala Festival Impact report
• Love Saves the Day
• Meadow in the Mountains
• Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games
• DGTL Festival video series 
• We Love Green 

Have you created a sustainability report that you would like to share? Please send it to info@vision2025.org.uk

Paradise City Festival, Brussels (daily capacity, 12,000) is set in a 90-hectare privately owned nature park filled with meadows, forests and ponds.  The public is not usually allowed in the park, so keeping the onsite ponds from being polluted by treating grey and black water is a key priority for the event team.

The festival collects black water (wastewater from toilets), in containers and transports them off site for reuse. For the less polluted grey water (wastewater from showers), Paradise City partners with Hello Water to filter the water and release it back into the ponds, not at drinking water quality, but clean enough for the environment. They also work hard to prevent trash from entering the water courses and to reduce the consumption of water overall. Read the full case study on the Future Festival Tools website. 

Photo credit: Paradise City by Annika Wallis

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

Transport policy expert and advisor to ecolibrium, Amy Woodward, reflects on sustainable travel trends and how they might impact the events sector, in Standut Magazine's green column HERE

New waste data recording tools released for Vision: 2025's citizen-science call for Festival Waste Data. Event organisers can get involved & receive the tools HERE

Top tips for minimising food waste at events from temporary event kitchen specialist at PKL, in Standout Magazine HERE

Julie's Bicycle share Unlimited Theatre's case study on how data collection helped inform their roadmap to net zero, HERE

Julie's Bicycle announce partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI) to help the screen sector act on climate 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