V Festival - A Sustainable Festival
- Aug 20, 2010
The Virgin Media V Festival weekend is upon us and thousands of revellers are preparing to travel to Hylands Park and Weston Park to see top music acts and enjoy two days of non-stop partying in the glorious sunshine (we hope!).
But can the great British summer music festival experience be made more sustainable?
This year, The Virgin Media V Festival has teamed up with two companies who are helping to reduce the festival’s environmental impact.
The Green Tent Company
Every year thousands of tents are left behind at music festival campsites and many of them will unfortunately end up in landfill, as they can not be sorted and recycled.
Virgin Media V Festival has partnered with The Green Tent Company, who supply recyclable polyester tents to festival goers.
The tents can be ordered online and collected at the festival campsite, saving you the hassle of lugging your tent to the festival in the first place.
Once the festival is over, on site tent-recycling drop-off points allow you to recycle your tent, if you can’t take it home with you, and prevent it from going to landfill.
And its not just tents. The Green Tent Company provides other camping essentials such as battery-free torches and ground mats - all of which can be recycled at the end of the festival.
Big Green Coach
Driving to festivals can sometimes be a stressful experience and all those traffic jams are not good for the environment.
An estimated 45% of the total carbon footprint of a music festival is made up of the emissions from audience travel to and from the site.
Big Green Coach is the official travel supplier to the festival, offering a travel service six times better for the environment than if you were to drive to the campsite yourself.
Big Green Coach only uses local coach companies and has a strict policy to limit the impact of its vehicles on the environment.
Virgin Mobile Free Fest
The Virgin Mobile Free Fest in the US is also fast approaching, with the revolutionary music festival taking place on September 25th at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.
As tickets are free, there is a focus on fundraising and last year over $80,000 was raised, and 30,000 hours of voulunteering were generated, to combat youth homelessness.
Everyone at Virgin hopes that these achievements can be surpassed at the 2010 festival.
The US festival has also won awards for being one of the greenest large music festivals in the country.
All Virgin festivals make efforts to improve their environmental impacts by implementing initiatives, such as cup recycling schemes, and supplying water tanks to cut down on bottled water use.
At Virgin, we think that it’s possible to enjoy a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle while minimising the negative impact we have on the planet.
For more information on the Virgin Group’s approach to sustainability, and how we are contributing to sustainable lifestyles, check out our Sustainability Report.
If you are not lucky enough to have a ticket for this year’s Virgin Media V Festival, you can watch bands live from the comfort of your own home - as for the first time it will be broadcast live online. Visit www.vfestival.com for more details.
