Sustainability Policy
At Festival of Thrift our focus has always been on how we as individuals can make those small changes, the shift to thrift, that will add up to a big difference for the future of our planet, and encouraging others to join in.
Building on our ethos and our existing sustainable working practices we are now looking to challenge ourselves to do even more to minimise the impact of our festival.
We have pledged to put into place a lasting strategy to ensure our own sustainability and reduce our impact on the planet and to share this journey with our audience. Using 2021 as the benchmark we will continue to measure and further develop our sustainability goals over the coming years.
Our action Plan
We will measure our carbon emissions and set ambitious reduction targets, using data captured at the festival to assess performance and monitor each year thereafter to track progress against original targets.
We will use Julies Bicycle Creative Green online tools with the ambition to gain Creative Green Certification. This will establish our festivals commitment to not only promote, but live by, our sustainable ethos and messaging.
We will not only monitor our own carbon emissions but share tools with suppliers, crew, audience and artists and encourage their participation, enabling others to gain an understanding of their own impact.
But tracking and offsetting carbon emissions is not enough. Our work will focus on all areas of the festival:
water usage
Waste
Energy
travel
traders
biodiversity
thought leadership
innovation
New activity will build on the creative programming focussed on sustainability issues already embedded in the festival and join other initiatives already underway.
In 2021 we:
- Recorded transport data for staff, artists, suppliers and contractors to assess our carbon footprint
- Recorded water usage across the site to set benchmarks for the following year
- Encouraged all staff, artists, contractors and attendees to carbon offset by using ecolibrium.earth/travel-carbon-calculator/
- Provided a supervised bike park to encourage cycling, with onsite access to free bike repairs through our Fix It Café
- Only used electric buggies for transportation around the site
- Explored more alternative power sources, for 2021 we will be using a solar powered stage
- Recorded our power usage & set ambitious targets for 2022 to phase out diesel generators, moving to more eco-friendly alternatives
- Introduced a ‘green rider’ for our artists to encourage eco-friendly choices
- Made it mandatory for our traders that all packaging is suitable for recycling and no single use plastics allowed
