Welcome to the February Vision for Sustainable Events Newsletter: This month: 

• The Green Events Code National Pilot Finding Report
• Green Leader Q&A with Charlotte Jackson, Sustainability Manager at Team Love
• Tim Benson talks cable core: Aluminium vs Copper
• onboard:earth celebrates raising £100,000 for environmental restoration projects in 2024
• Resource Spotlight: Vapes at Festivals Toolkit is updated for 2025
• Julie’s Bicycle and Secult Pará launch guide to support event organisers in adopting regenerative practices. 
• EarthPercent launch 2024 Impact Report 
• LIVE partners with ecotricity to help live music venues access 100% renewable energy. 
• Sustainable supplier spotlight: attend2IT’s Journey to Net Zero
• An overview of upcoming events and news from across the industry. 

Contact bethan@visionsustainableevents.org to share newsletter ideas, stories and queries.

The Green Events Code of Practice (GECoP) pilot demonstrated that local authority-led assessments can enhance sustainability in outdoor events, highlighting the need for national standards. Ten local authorities, including Bristol, Reading, Liverpool, and Manchester, trialled GECoP across 60 events attended by 2.3 million people, spanning music festivals, sports events, and community gatherings. The project assessed the integration of environmental criteria into event planning, revealing overwhelming support for nationwide minimum standards - with endorsement from all participating authorities and 96% of event organisers. The findings suggest that consistent national criteria would help events meet sustainability goals more effectively, paving the way for future policy development Read the findings >>

Charlotte manages sustainability for Team Love, working to maximise positive social impacts and minimise the environmental impact of festivals like FORWARDS and Love Saves the Day. She also coordinates strategic comms for Bristol Good Food 2030, a framework for action to transform Bristol’s food system within the decade. She is passionate about the power of community, events, and food to inspire climate and nature action. Read Charlotte's answers to our monthly Q&A >>

Last month we spoke to Stefan Edwards Senior Events Officer at Bristol City Council, read his answers HERE. 

This blog post from Tim Benson at Powerful Thinking explores the debate between aluminium and copper cables, focusing on their use in large-scale events and renewable energy projects. Tim highlights that, while aluminium offers advantages such as lower cost, lighter weight, and recyclability, it falls short in conductivity and durability compared to copper. Tim covers the history and types of aluminium conductors, discusses the challenges of using them in event settings and suggests that a hybrid approach might be the future of successful cable installations. Read the full article >>

The charity onboard:earth celebrate their live events industry community raising £740,000 for environmental restoration projects since the charity was founded in 2015 to tackle the impact of travel carbon at events. In 2024 alone, event members and audiences channelled £100k to ecosystem regeneration, supporting communities on the frontline of climate change, preserving threatened rainforests and providing neighbourhoods in the UK with clean affordable power. The charity has launched a free-to-download app, to track travel and model low-carbon routes and an offline tool for members to record and measure scopes 1, 2 and 3 travel emissions. Find out more >> 

The team at Material Focus is back with an update on the 'Recycle Your Electricals' campaign, which aims to support UK festivals and events with vape recycling this summer. 

Read the updated Vapes at Festivals Toolkit to help stakeholders understand how to manage vapes and vape recycling including how to work with waste contractors, communicate effectively with audiences and details on current available funding for vape bins. View the resource >> 

Julie’s Bicycle and Secult Pará have launched a new guide, to support event organisers, artists, and cultural workers in adopting regenerative practices informed by the Amazon’s unique ecosystem and cultural traditions. Featuring case studies from Pará’s vibrant cultural sector, the guide highlights how Indigenous knowledge and nature-based approaches can inspire systemic change. As we move towards COP30, it invites global cultural practitioners to explore how deep-rooted, place-based sustainability can shape a more just and regenerative future. Read the report >> 

A pioneering initiative from LIVE’s partnership with Ecotricity is designed to help live music venues access affordable, 100% renewable energy by uniting under a shared energy purchasing model, LEES delivers significant cost savings and promotes sustainable best practices across the industry.  At the heart of the scheme is the energy basket model with participants benefiting from the economies of scale that come with buying energy collectively.  This approach not only brings together venues of all sizes but also unlocks lower rates that would typically only be available to much larger individual consumers. Find out more >> 

EarthPercent have launched their 2024 Impact Report - its a celebration of how the music industry is taking bold, sustainable steps into the future. A highlight of the report is their work in giving $710,000 to grant partners to do vital work through trust-based funding that empowers them to be both resilient and strategic.

Vision is proud to be one of EarthPercent's 2024 'Greening Music' Grant Partners, their support in 2024 has enabled us to lead on sector-changing research, collaboration and action in the UK outdoor live events space. Read the report >> 

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

• LIVE (Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment) has published an open letter calling on artists to support a petition advocating for a more sustainable live music industry HERE >>
• Boomtown Fair announce stage to be powered by Hydrogen alone, in Standout Magazine HERE >>
• ‘How many Music Festivals are there in the UK?’ 'Making Festival Count' helps answer the question HERE>>
• ES Global outlines sustainable vision for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, in Access All Areas HERE>>

Our newsletter reaches over 4,800 UK event professionals interested in sustainability. Send jobs, events, resources and articles to feature here to: info@visionsustainableevents.org