Sustainability Review 2020

The Music Barn Festival is held on private farmland in deepest East Northamptonshire. The impact of the festival on both the local surrounds and its impact on the broader environment is incredibly important to us. For the past few years we have looked closely at improving our environmental conservational efforts and continue to make changes to becoming a carbon neutral festival.

Here are some of the initiatives we are taking…

· Tickets for Trees initiative. In 2020 we will be planting trees for every ticket that is bought which will offset our annual carbon output. Although we are a small event with a relatively small impact on global climate, we still want to do our bit. Using data from the U.S. Forest Service, they estimated the amount each tree was likely to sequester. The average was 88 pounds per tree per year which equates to almost 2 tons over 40 years. Having undertaken an exercise to investigate the size of our carbon footprint it was concluded that the event produces around 12 tons of carbon. Therefore, we would need to plant around 400 trees to be carbon neutral over a single year. (It is recognised that some of the data we used was averaged across similar events and not specific to the Music Barn.)

· Reusable cup scheme. In 2018 we introduced a reusable cup scheme which drastically reduced the amount of single use plastic cups we are sending to landfill. Guests buy one of our Music Barn reusable cups at the start of the event and return to the bar or drinking water station to fill up throughout the event. At the end of the event guests could then keep the cups (for the next event) or put them in one of the recycling points. The scheme will continue in 2020.

· Site Clean Up. We want to return the festival site to how it was before the event. That means returning the grassland area across the site including the car park and camping site to a state that we found it prior to the event. After the festival the whole site is scoured for rubbish by our clean up crew. You can help too by using our range of rubbish bins or taking rubbish home with you from the car park or campsite. The litter crew will also extend their clear up to the entrance way and the roadside immediately outside the site.

· Biodegradable disposables. For the past 4 years we have asked all of our food and drink vendors to use biodegradable disposables or re-usable cups and plates on stalls. We have a very supportive group of caterers use materials such as wood, banana leaves or bamboo in all of their single use products.

· Drinking Water. We are striving to reduce our single use plastics. One of the biggest users of plastic bottles is spring water suppliers. To this end we have installed a drinking water standpipe in the meadow. It will be clearly signposted and free to use.

· More bins and recycling points were installed across site. We plan to provide extra bins on site in 2020.

· We have worked alongside Baileys Waste Management for the third year running. Baileys are a locally based firm who manage all of our waste after the event, sorting the rubbish at their site in Corby to ensure that at least 75% is diverted away from landfill.

· No glass policy. The event will be a No Glass Event, with all bars serving non-glass drinking vessels. This has an environmental as well as safety impact.