News
SPAIN – Día De La Música first Spanish festival to be Industry Green certified
Día de la Música has become the first Spanish festival to achieve the prestigious Industry Green (IG) certification, and the first festival outside the UK to achieve IG overall. It joins the likes of Glastonbury, Reading, Leeds, Lovebox and Shambala Festival, as well as other creative businesses such as performance venues and record labels undergoing IG certification to show commitment to reducing their environmental impacts.
Día de la Música, now a 1 star IG festival, was one of the first festivals in Spain to adopt an integrated approach to sustainability for its 2011 event. This included: encouraging public transport, cycling and electric car travel for festival goers; powering the festival using solar, pedal power and biodiesel; serving organic local food; recycling, and communicating the imrpotance of environmental sustainability to festival goers. The Industry Green certification process has helped Día de la Música’s sustainability coordinator measure carbon emissions from the 2011 event’s energy, water, waste and travel to create a baseline for improvement in 2012.
Día de la Música has continued to focus its environmental initiatives on further reducing its environmental impacts in 2012 across all aspects of production, adopting a new slogan: ‘The New Energy Festival’. The festival’s sustainable approach will extend to all technical areas of production and will include an ambitious strategy to communicate and raise awareness of environmental sustainability among artists, festival employees, site staff, traders and consessions, and audiences.
Día de la Música has also received an A Greener Festival Award (2011) for its commitment to sustainability, the Green & Clean Award, granted by the European Association of festivals, Yourope, and the Vivo Certificate for Sustainability, awarded by Spanish company Universo Vivo. It also holds the Greenhouse Gases Emission Offset title, awarded by the Madrid City Council, for planting forest species under the municipal carbon offset ‘Proyecto Madrid Compensa’.
Industry Green is a certification scheme offered by creative industries sustainability experts, Julie’s Bicycle. The 1 to 3 star certifications are available for festivals, venues, offices and CD packaging, to show stakeholders, staff, the wider industry and audiences a commitment to environmental sustainability. IG ensures the transparent reporting of environmental impacts and targets to improve.
Alison Tickell, CEO of Julie’s Bicycle, said: “IG has provided an increasing number of festivals with a framework to understand and improve on their environmental impacts, and tell their stakeholders about it. It’s great to see festivals outside the UK joining this network of more sustainable businesses, and we look forward to following Día de la Música’s leadership on this issue among Spanish festivals inspiring others to act.”
(www.eventindustrynewseurope.com)