Tuesday 23rd August 2022: This weekend just gone by was the 2022 FolkEast Festival at Glemham Hall in Suffolk. A GOLD Carbon Charter member which has led the way on reducing the impacts of events like this.
Established in 2012, FolkEast brings together a surprisingly wide range of musical artists and this year, as always, had something for everyone at the packed venue.
The Carbon Charter was there giving advice, playing games as well as highlighting some of the actions that make FolkEast a low-carbon music festival…
The waste contractor achieves a 75% recycling rate by hand sorting all of the waste. Waste bags are given to all campers and they are encouraged to take it home with them. If they do (and many, many of them do) their waste counts as zero carbon miles for disposal as they are travelling home anyway. From 2019 onwards, single use plastic was banned and the first of the chilled water stations opened, which allowed people to easily use their own bottles.
Midas Power (also a Carbon Charter member) are the suppliers of the generators and they specialise in low pollution generators using LPG rather than diesel they are quieter as well so less likely to disturb the musical mood. Power cubes are installed in the back stage area to time-shift the power supply and reduce the generator running hours to as low as a third of what it would be otherwise. Each year, more and more of the overall requirements are provided by solar PV arrays spread around the grounds.
The volunteers charged with helping the smooth running of the event work hard to pick up what may get away from attendees and it was noticeable that, by 9am on the Monday following the weekend, the site was completely clean of litter. Well done to the ‘Green Team’.
This is the year of encouragement of the crew, production, artists, stall holders, festival goers, suppliers and everyone else who makes the festival happen in joining together to make FolkEast as sustainable as possible.
Here’s to next year…
