final Greener Festival Awards 2008 announced

twelve more festivals rewarded for their green credentials

The final selection of festivals have been announced as recipients of this year's Greener Festival Awards for their efforts in promoting environmentally friendly music festivals. In the final Greener Festival Awards announcement twelve more festivals pick up the eco-award.

There are nine UK festivals including The Big Chill, Bestival, Summer Sundae Weekender, Waveform, Shambala, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival, End of the Road, and Hydro Connect.

Four more international festivals have also been recognised for their green efforts. Ireland's Electric Picnic, Portugal's Boom, Southbound in Australia and the Rothbury Festival in the USA have all joined the list of winners for the 2008 Greener Festival Award. In August the first recipients of this year's awards were announced, see news piece, click here.

All of the award winners were praised by award organisers AGreenerFestival.com for their efforts to promote environmentally friendly music festivals.

Greener Festival Awards were unveiled last year and in keeping with the website's ethos aims to promote greener practices and sustainability for the festival circuit.

In total twenty three UK festivals and eight international festivals have won the award. Six festivals gained the ultimate accolade of the 'outstanding' award from the organisers including the Waveform and Shambala festivals in the UK and Bonnaroo in the USA. The UK festivals are (in alphabetical order):

Bestival
The Big Chill
Big Session Festival
Camden Green Fair (outstanding award)
The Cambridge Folk Festival
City Blues Festival
Download
End of the Road
The Glade
The Glastonbury Festival
Hard Rock Calling
Hydro Connect
Latitude
Leeds Festival
Lounge on the Farm
Reading Festival
Shambala (outstanding award)
Summer Sundae Weekender
T in the Park
Waveform (outstanding award)
Wireless Festival
Workhouse Festival
2000 Trees

The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival (USA), Bluesfest - Eastcoast Blues & Roots Festival (Australia), Boom (Portugal), Electric Picnic (Ireland), The Falls Festival (Australia), Rothbury Festival (USA), Southbound (Australia), and West Coast Blues n Roots Festival (Australia) all receive international awards for their efforts.

The Award is based on a seven part questionnaire which covers event management, travel and transport plans, CO2 emissions, fair trade, waste management and recycling, water management and noise pollution. Points are awarded for festivals which can show an active plan to promote public transport, reduce on-site waste, recycle and compost wherever possible, re-use water and use sustainable power. Festivals are expected to have a coherent environmental policy and AGreenerFestival.com has environmental auditors who visit as many festival sites as possible to assess how festivals implement their plans.

A Greener Festival co-founder Claire O'Neill said, "This year applications for our awards more than doubled and this is fantastic news. More and more festivals are making the effort go green and adopt environmentally friendly practices. Some festivals are still improving and going through a steep learning curve, others are old hands now who keep improving their green credentials year on year. The UK and international festival scene is now making a concerted effort to be leaders in changing behaviour to protect the environment."

The organisers also congratulated the eighteen festivals who had won the Green 'n' Clean Award from Yourope, the European festivals organisation.

A Greener Festival's Luke Westbury added, "We fully endorse and support Yourope's award and the progress they are making. Across both Europe and the UK we can see significant and positive change. Green n Clean have some fantastic festivals taking part including Denmark's Roskilde, St Gallen Open Air in Swtitzerland, Rheinkultur in Germany, Pinkpop in the Nederlands and Finland's Provinssirock. We salute them!"

The winners of the yourope awards were: Hultfred Festival (Sweden), Lowlands (The Nederlands), Rheinkultur (Germany), Rock Werchter (Belgium), Paléo Festival (Nyon), Das Fest (Germany), Pukkelpop (Belgium ), Roskilde Festival (Denmark), Gurtenfestival (Berne), Illosarirock (Finland), Ruisrock (Finland), Taubertal Festival (Germany), Pinkpop (The Nederlands), Provinssirock (Finland), Les Recontres Transmusicales de Rennes (France), T in the Park (Scotland), Rip Curl Festival (France), and OpenAir St.Gallen (Switzerland)

This festival award actually has some meaning. Unlike other festival awards, its based on a fair comparison by people who have actually attended the festivals being voted for or against, and isn't based on marketing through emails begging for votes, a perhaps self interested short-list of festivals to vote for, or people voting for or against festivals they haven't attended - through all these things other awards are completely meaningless.

discuss this news on the Festival Forums