Greens Get Their Kit Together

Maybe one of Green Events Europe’s best achievements is to show that it’s a sustainable organization, rather than being just a smallish pressure group that occasionally attaches itself to one of Europe’s increasing number of music conferences.

The next Green Events Europe conference will be its fifth annual gathering at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Bonn, Germany. The lineup of speakers indicates it’s now sufficiently established to attract panelists from some of the top music conferences. This year it has Ruud Berends from Eurosonic-Noorderslag in The Netherlands, Fruzsina Szép, who’s just moved from Hungary’s Sziget Festival to Germany’s Berli Festival, and Mikkel Sander from Roskilde Festival in Demark.

Among the 30 or so speakers there are also those well-known for being linked with green issues, such as Kevin Bendix, who works for a Danish organization called Stop Wasting Food, Valentin Thurn from Germany’s Taste The Waste, and Claire O‘Neill from the UK’s A Greener Festival. O‘Neill, Sabine Funk and Holger Jan Schmidt from Green Events Europe, Glastonbury lawyer Ben Challis, and Teresa Moore from the UK’s Bucks New University are among the stalwarts telling festivals how they can reduce their waste and letting them know what they can best do with what’s left of it.

They’ve helped make green issues sustainable. The conference at the beginning of November will discuss such topics as how food impacts our climate and planet, minimizing food waste, reducing the carbon emissions resulting from people travelling to festivals, and how promoters and even agents can help contribute to a better environment. Green Events Europe is in Bonn Nov. 3-4.