Hay Festival Greenprint

1. Reduce transport impacts.

For official travel, walk, bike, carpool or take public transport more often.

Set up a car-sharing message board on your website.

Offer ticket price discounts to those who travel by public transport.

2. Make people responsible.

Make it someone’s job to check that lights have been turned off, heating is only used when necessary etc.

3. Recycle more.

Focus on those areas where you can make an easy difference for example cardboard or glass. You can cut back on carbon dioxide emissions and potentially save money on landfill charges.

4. Replace with energy efficient lighting.

Whether in the Festival office or during the Festival, replacing six regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs will save 400kg of carbon dioxide a year.

5. Facilitate increased tap water use.

Bottled water has a high impact both in transport costs and in waste. Provide standpipes and encourage the public to refill their water bottles.

6. Avoid products with a lot of packaging.

This not only reduces carbon used in the packaging but by reducing the weight, more can be transported for less. There is also the added benefit of reducing the effort and cost to you in getting rid of the waste.

7. Reduce your printed materials.

Cut back on programme printing saving resources and costs. Encourage the public to use just one programme during their time at the Festival. Have a box at the exits for people to return their programmes if they do not want them anymore.

8. Ban the plastic bag.

There are plenty of good, sustainable alternatives to plastic bags, banning the issuing of plastic bags from the Festival venues, trade stands and stall-holders will make a sizable contribution to reducing your impact.

9. Turn off electrical devices.

Simply turning off your televisions, DVD players, stereos and computers when you’re not using them will save you thousands of kilograms of carbon dioxide a year. This applies in your Festival offices as much as it does in Festival venues.

10. Be part of the solution.

Don’t get put off by the potential scale of the situation or by thinking that it’s not worth trying – every little helps.

And one final, extra, quick win……, encourage staff to stay calm, lowering their breathing rates and therefore reducing CO2 emissions.