ROBBY RECOMMENDS
HELLO folks and welcome to my second missive on all things green and futuristic.
Somewhere between 80 or 90 per cent of any festival’s carbon footprint is caused by vehicle travel to and from the festival, so a big focus for us this year is to get people onto buses, coaches and trains, leaving their cars at home.
To this end, we’re also working hard to really slick up the flow of buses to and from the festival site, including creating a new bus station in what was the main car park. This also has the knock-on bonus effect that you now won’t have as far to walk with all your gear if you come by public transport. In a nutshell, come on a coach and you’re puffing out 26 grams CO2 per passenger mile, while if you drive on your own, you’re killing us all with 344 grams CO2 per passenger mile. Having said all that, I could do with getting some more coaches.
As I mentioned last month, we’ve been implementing more renewable energy use at Bestival year on year. In 2009, the Bandstand stage’s sound and lighting was solar powered for 12 hours a day over the whole weekend. And next to it, Cowes-based firm Engenius used the genius part of its name to charge up 665 mobile phones for free with solar power.
And while we are on the subject of genius Island firms, we must give a very warm hand to Wight Made (see page 3), who collected 1,600 litres of used cooking oil from the all the food stalls at Bestival 2009 and have been busy recycling it into bio-diesel, so we can re-use it to run some of our generators at Bestival this year — generators which another clever Island company, JMC, has converted for recycled bio-diesel use.
Meantime, I’m looking into getting some solar power on the roof of Chateau da Bank thanks to the ace government (how often do those two words go hand in hand?!) scheme that pays you for electricity generated by yourself. Check it out.
We’d love to hear from any other inspired Island companies with big green ideas, so please contact us via hello@bestival.net
Rob da Bank is the founder and promoter of Bestival www.bestival.net
Bestival 2010 takes place on September 10 to 12 at
Robin Hill Country Park.