Fancy a festival with green credentials next summer? Check out our list of the biggest and best eco-friendly festivals across the UK to add to your bucket list.
Taking place in Hertfordshire, Sunrise is an ethical living, organic arts and music festival that is all about being good to the earth, as well as being good to yourself.
With an ethos of sustainability and organic living within a family-friendly environment, Sunrise organisers encourage festival-goers to ‘frolic in fields, dance with butterflies and learn skills that will forge the way to leading a planet-friendly lifestyle.’
As well as enforcing a site-wide policy that everything traded and used on-site is ethically sourced, the festival has boycotted larger unethical brands in favour of smaller, more conscientious businesses – asking those who attend to ‘make a stand against single-use items and say no to waste culture.’
Now in its thirteenth year, Latitude is a music and performing arts festival set in the scenic Henham Park in Suffolk.
With seven music stages for fans of all genres, the family-friendly festival also hosts a range of comedy, theatre, dance, and wellbeing activities for all ages.
In terms of Latitude’s green credentials, they work with a number of charities including Julie’s Bicycle – a not-for-profit organisation working on sustainability within the creative industries, and Big Green Coach, who ‘provide coaches for travelling to the festival – a positive step towards reducing the environmental impact caused by festival travel.’
Latitude also uses a clever deposit scheme for reusable cups in a bid to reduce single-use plastics on-site – festival-goers pay £2 on their first beer, which they get back on the return of the cup.
An independent music and arts festival, Green Man sees people enjoy live music, outdoor adventures and family fun – with ten areas for people to explore from music, literature, comedy, art and science.
Held in the Brecon Beacons, being green is ‘fundamental’ to Green Man, who team up with organisations Help Refugees and the Newport to Calais Aid Collective to collect unwanted camping equipment that will help reduce plastic and food waste and sending them to refugees across the world.
They also provide drinking water throughout the festival – with people either bringing their own bottle to refill or buying one at one of their FRANK Water stalls and provide solar energy phone charging stations from Wild Solar.
The UK’s largest festival, Glastonbury is world-famous and has seen stars including David Bowie, The Cure, Oasis and The Rolling Stones headline the Pyramid Stage.
Held at Worthy Farm in Somerset, the organisers of Glastonbury say that they ‘have a duty to make sure the land on which it stands is looked after. With over 200,000 people visiting and working across the site, reducing the impact the festival has on its general environment is a huge task, and one we are fiercely devoted to.’
2019 saw single-use plastic drinks bottles were unavailable to purchase on-site at Glastonbury. All cans, glass, paper, wood and organic waste collected is also hand-separated and processed at their on-site recycling facility.
After encouraging festival-goers to take their camping equipment with them when they leave, this year’s festival saw an amazing 99.3 per cent of tents removed from the site!
To help people further reduce their environmental impact at festivals, Bio-D has also put together some top tips on how you can have your most eco-friendly festival season ever with more advice on how you can reduce your impact on the planet.
Set in a secret location in Northamptonshire across the Bank Holiday weekend, Shambala sees over 200 diverse musical acts perform across 12 live stages alongside an array of workshops, stand-up comedy, interactive theatres and nationally acclaimed poetry.
‘Committed to being as environmentally sustainable as possible, Shambala’s green credentials are considered pioneering Europe-wide.’ Having reduced their carbon footprint by over 80 per cent since its conception in 1999, the festival is powered by 100 per cent renewable energy and have become meat and fish free.
Have you been or are you planning a trip to any of these festivals? Let us know how it went over on Twitter.
