Live music sector shows green example

The live music sector has been identified as a leader in green practices after environmental group Julie’s Bicycle awarded an unprecedented 14 Industry Green awards to festivals, Music Week has reported.

This follows a mass enrolment of festivals to take part in JB’s scheme to help measure and curb greenhouse gases.

Some festivals that have been tackling sustainability issues for many years were able to measure improvements year-on-year, while most were able to at least set benchmarks to improve upon during the festival season.

JB operations director Catherine Langabeer said many festivals signed up to the programme before their events took place last year, giving them time to put systems in place to gather statistics.

“Over the best part of the last year they have been working to get the data and establish the targets,” she said.

Langabeer said the festivals would be able to track their environmental performance against each other and that JB also planned to establish an industry average in the next couple of months.

The organisation, which uses a complex set of tools to measure carbon emissions, energy, waste, water and audience travel, has produced its first festival IG ranking based on a star system.

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