Festivals wreak havoc on the landscape. Four ciders in and on the cusp of sunstroke, tossing that beer bottle on the ground seems winningly devil-may-care. But leaving the festival site, fighting a migraine and wading through marshes of trash, you realise your mistake. You have spoiled the natural world. You are a monster.
It’s not just the litterbugs causing problems. A festival is essentially a small, incredibly wasteful temporary city. Generators burp into the atmosphere, while cables and wires gobble electricity. You can charge your phone, but only if you have an expensive disposable battery pack. Luckily for the countryside, a new generation of festivals is springing out of the weary ground to counter the waste.
The Innocent Unplugged festival (innocentunplugged.com) — yes, from the team who make the smoothies — bills itself as “a weekend off the grid”.
Held in Kent on May 23 to 24, the festival will have no wi-fi, no 3G, and no phone chargers. Instead of fast food vans, there’ll be a forest feast; the standard festival fairground of teacups and swings is sidelined for wood-fired hot tubs, saunas and showers.
The stage is powered by the movement of the crowd and, weather permitting, solar power. The hippy fare veers close to parody: a handmade yurt will host speakers, a “guerrilla gardening” session, a “beat-boxing flautist” and “laughter yoga”. Swing cats The Correspondents are playing a set. Unlike Glasto, you’ll leave in full control of your marbles.
You don’t have to have a big brand behind you to look out for the environment. Teensy Wood Festival (woodfestival.tumblr.com), held at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire, is powered entirely by renewable energy. It’s very family-friendly — sort of like Latitude lite — and promises “amazing food and drink”.
London music festivals 2015
Headliners are reassuringly obscure: Tunng, Songhoy Blues and Treetop Flyers, so you’ll head home both full of the joys of spring with new music to outdo your trendiest friends.
Shambala (shambalafestival.org), which insiders are touting as the new Secret Garden Party, is also powered by renewable energy. The festival, held in Northamptonshire from August 27-30, has won the international A Greener Festival Award four times.
Organisers have reduced its carbon footprint by 81 per cent over five years. This year it’s having a big push on recycling. Its Bring a Bottle campaign bans the on-site sale of wasteful plastic water containers. Instead, it sells stainless steel reusable ones and donates the proceeds to Frank Water’s clean water projects in India. It also offers reusable cups so your cider comes with a side order of environmental conscience, and lays on green travel initiatives including subsidised coaches from main cities and a biodiesel shuttle bus.
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All the fish sold on site are species on the Marine Conservation Society’s “fish to eat” list; all milk is organic, and all meat and eggs free range.
And, after assessing its energy use (electricity is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions), opera festival Glyndebourne (May 21-August 30, glyndebourne.com) will be powered by a wind turbine for the second year in a row. Arias sound all the sweeter when conducted to the hums of renewable energy.
This summer, go hard and go green.
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