No Awards For Being Green

The team behind UK-based A Greener Festival has decided to put itself on hold for a year, even to the point that it’s skipping its annual awards.

For AGF this is a considerable sacrifice as it’s the one music business organisation that should get an award for giving out awards.

Last year it handed out 46 of them. Claire O’Neill, one of the campaign group’s co-founders, says that in the eight years since AGF was founded “event sustainability has matured and moved into the mainstream,” which has caused it to re-think how their awards could best fit into the picture.

“The fact that audiences want environmentally conscious events – and that sustainable practices are often money saving – means that the sustainable events industry has really grown up,” she explained.

“AGF is using 2015 to reconfigure the awards format and assessment processes to reflect this maturity.” It seems 2015 is a good year for the AGF awards to take a breather, given that Yourope – the 80 event strong European festivals association – has re-launched its own Green n Clean Award for its member events. The industry also other Green awards or “a number of other certification routes,” as the AGF press release put it.

Glastonbury lawyer Ben Challis, another AGF co-founder, says that this year it will mainly focus on making its website “comprehensive knowledge hub for green events” and providing “a free, accessible resource for anyone wanting to do the right thing environmentally.”

It will also continue its other activities including the Festival Wood initiative in Scotland, which has so far resulted in it planting more than 2,200 trees.

At ILMC AGT staged its Green Events & Innovations Conference, which it runs in cahoots with Bucks New University, where it teamed with the Nationwide Caterers Association to create healthy catering from food that would otherwise be thrown away. Pioneers in the green events sector since its launch in 2006, the AGF team is made up entirely of volunteers who work in the music, events and environmental science industries.

AGF has assessed over 300 festivals spanning five continents as part of its awards scheme, which is supported by worldwide entertainment insurance broker Robertson Taylor W&P Longreach.