Posts Tagged ‘Sustainable Event Management’
Earlier this month, Pete and I took a team to Southbound as part of Greensense’s ongoing partnership with Sunset Events as their sustainability auditor. For any who don’t know, Southbound is one of Western Australia’s largest and most iconic music festivals. Held in Busselton, three hours south from Perth, it attracts over 20, 000 people over the weekend.
Our role at an event like Southbound is to work with the team at Sunset Events, as well as the large number of suppliers to the festival, to understand exactly what goes into putting on an event of this type and size, and importantly, the associated impacts of these activities in terms of energy and water consumption, waste management and carbon emissions.
During the festival itself, we were out and about surveying festival goers to understand how they travelled to Southbound as well as checking out Southbound’s other green initiatives. This helps us understand how well (or not) these ideas actually work in reality and means we can make recommendations on how to reduce the impact of future events.
One of the most positive things for us was to see FestivalBudi in action for the first time in Australia: Acting on a recommendation from a previous Greensense sustainability audit, Southbound promoted the use of FestivalBudi (part of Liftshare) as a means of putting travellers in touch with each other to encourage carpooling to festival. While we were surveying, we came across a few people who had used it and everyone thought it was a great idea to save money, meet new people and do their bit for the environment.
To top it all off, when we weren’t surveying festival goers, counting cars in the carpark or chatting with the stall holders, we still managed to see some great bands and have a dance in the silent disco — what a great start to the year!
Greensense will calculate the carbon inventory of the 2009 Margaret River Drug Aware Pro and develop strategies to reduce the environmental impact of future events with a view to them carbon neutral.
Derek Gerrard, Managing Director of Greensense says “This initiative is about raising awareness of the climate change issue and recognising that simple behavioural changes can make a big difference.”
To calculate the carbon inventory of the event, Greensense estimates the carbon emissions produced by competitor, official and spectator travel and accommodation, catering, water usage, waste management, recycling, ticketing, printing, marketing and other carbon producing activities.
Tom Wilson, International Events Manager of Surfing WA says “We are embarking on a new and positive direction for the future of the Drug Aware Pro. In a first for any major event in Western Australia, Greensense will be undertaking a carbon audit that will produce some real positive outcomes for the future of the Drug Aware Pro on how best we can manage the pollution we put into the environment.”
