Clean, Green and Serene – Sustainability at Nozstock
How clean, green and serene are we really?
According to Vision:2025, a collective paving the future for a sustainable events industry, UK festivals generate 25,800 tonnes of waste, over 22 thousand tonnes of CO2, and use 185m litres of water annually. Here at Noz, we want to keep our parallel world as clean and green as possible, thank you very much, so every year we put our heads together to come up with as many green policies and pledges as possible. From spoons to sleeping bags, bottles to buses – we’ve got it covered.
Back in 2018 we signed up with the Association of Independent Festivals’ Drastic on Plastic campaign, a pledge to eliminate all single-use plastics at events by 2022. As part of this, we’ve asked all our traders onsite to only use biodegradable cutlery and plates, and you won’t spy any plastic straws on our bars. Speaking of bars, we’re continuing our now time-honoured tradition of the cup deposit scheme: you’ll pay an extra quid for the first drink you buy, and it’ll be served in a sturdy Noz-branded beaker instead of a flimsy plastic cup. When you buy another drink, just hand over the cup to get a clean, shiny new one. Beyond the bars, we’ve upped the numbers of water points across site for you to fill up your reusable drinking bottles with refreshing h2o – stay hydrated, Nozzers! And if glitter is on your 100% essential Nozstock packing list, make sure it’s the biodegradable kind – better for the cows, and just as sparkly!
There’s all sorts of green goings-on for you to get stuck in with at Noz, including our Eco Bond scheme. The cost of your ticket includes a refundable £5 Eco Bond on top: simply bring back a bag of rubbish to the Eco Bond Exchange at the end of the festival to claim your crisp fiver in return. Bin bags will be handed out on entry to the festival – don’t say we never give you anything! If you’re looking to witness a piece of history, make sure to catch the celebrity tree planting ceremony on Celebritree Avenue, as one lucky artist will join the likes of Henning Wehn, Hollie Cooke and Molotov Jukebox in planting the latest sapling on the farm.
Terrifying tent-based fact: an estimated 875 tonnes of plastic waste, primarily tents and sleeping bags, are abandoned at UK festivals every year. To help combat this, we’ll be encouraging all Nozzers: Love Thy Tent and take it home with you when you leave! As ever, the Clean Campsite Competition Crew will be surveying the fields, looking for the finest in pop-up décor, inspired gazebo feng shui, and all-round tidiness. The most impressive pitches will be in with a chance to win big at the Clean Campsite Awards.
If you can’t face hauling all the necessary equipment with you to the farm, our friends at Camplight offer reclaimed, pre-pitched tents to suit all budgets, as well as sleeping bags, mats and much else besides! The wonderful folk at People in Motion will also be collecting donations of camping equipment at the end of the festival to redistribute to refugees so, if for whatever reason you don’t want to take your tent home with you, don’t bin it – donate it!
We love opening up our little corner of the world to all 5,000 of you every year. However, it can come with its downsides – mainly, the traffic! To avoid clogging up our country lanes with a load of festival-based congestion, we’ve laid on all sorts of transportation methods to make it as easy as pie to reach us all the way here in the Hidden Valley – and to get back home again – without a car.
Why not make some new mates and save some dosh by riding the Nozstock coach this year? We also put on a shuttle bus throughout festival hours if you need to nip into Bromyard for supplies. If public transport isn’t feasible, why not check out LiftShare to offer up a ride to the Farm, or to find one? Find out more travel info here; https://nozstock.com/info/travel-2/
At Noz, we’re proud to support Grown in Britain, an NGO dedicated to preserving the UK’s forests. We’ve pledged to only use locally-sourced timber from well managed woodlands to build our amazing site wherever possible. We’re also card-carrying members of the Energy Revolution: a movement by the people, for the people, which seeks to offset the impact of your travel to the Hidden Valley by investing donations in clean, renewable energy. To donate, pop your postcode in the carbon offsetting section of the ticker purchase page to calculate your impact and invest it back! Viva la Revolucion!
All that plus talks, workshops and activities for all ages aplenty – get involved and get inspired by all the ways we can reimagine a cleaner, greener world for the future, right here on the Farm…
