Read about our environmental sustainability initiatives and how you can help
Browse All CategoriesWe work very closely with Julie’s Bicycle, a not-for-profit organisation working on sustainability within the creative industries, as part of their Industry Green certification. In 2017 we achieved an incredible 4/ 5 stars, thank you to everyone for participating! Read the full report here.
We are also proud to be one of the 70 Vision Festival’s committed to reducing our carbon emissions, read more here about the Vision Festival: 2025 pledge.
Travelling to the festival makes up 80% of the total carbon emissions generated. You could travel by public transport or carshare to help reduce this.
Read the latest full report here.
Carbon Balancing with Energy Revolution
The main contributor of carbon emissions at festivals is travel, which accounts for 70% of a festival’s carbon footprint. That is why at Download Festival we are introducing carbon offsetting to our car and motorcycle parking prices. £1 of the cost of your parking pass will be donated to the charity Energy Revolution, who invest in renewable energy projects. Watch this video to find out more.
We have partnered with Big Green Coach to provide coach travel to the festival and have some exciting incentives for coach travellers.
For every customer who books travel with Big Green Coach, they sponsor and protect 5 square foot of Amazonian Rainforest for 10 years. 1 million square foot has been saved already! Check out their website for more info.
If you have a spare seat in your car or need a lift home why not car share? Car sharing will not only help you save money by sharing the costs but it will also reduce the amount of traffic on the roads, helping the environment. Last year the number of passengers who used our car sharing service tripled, so keep it up.
Our car sharing partner is Liftshare – visit READING LIFTSHARE to find drivers offering spaces in their car or festival goers who need a lift.
We have exciting news – the first 100 people that sign up to Liftshare can upgrade their Car Park Pass to a Priority Car Park Pass. This means that not only will you have priority parking but you can cruise up close to the main entrance for speedy access. Visit READING LIFTSHARE to sign up!
Liftshare have been awarded the TrustSeal, which confirms they run on good practice principles with clear safety guidelines and take appropriate steps to verify the identity of their users.
Carbon Balancing with Energy Revolution
The main contributor of carbon emissions at festivals is travel, which accounts for 70% of a festival’s carbon footprint. That is why at Download Festival we are introducing carbon offsetting to our car and motorcycle parking prices. £1 of the cost of your parking pass will be donated to the charity Energy Revolution, who invest in renewable energy projects. Watch this video to find out more.
We recycled an incredible 68% of our waste in 2017, so thank you for everyone who used the recycling points in the campsites and the three bin system in the main arena. Let’s beat that this year!
You can be a recycling champion in your camp!
When your bags are full bring them to the NiftyBin Recycling Points for your chance to win 2 x free tickets for next year, merch, or Co-op vouchers to use at home! A member of the F.B.I (Festival Bin Inspectors) can help you separate them out into all the different materials to learn about Zero Waste philosophy.
Gold: A chance to win 2 x festival tickets next year – For all the recycling champions out there! Bring back your green bag of mixed recyclables and clear bags to sort into the different NiftyBins. Take Lids off bottles, empty all liquids and remove soft plastics to become a real gold recycler.
Silver: A chance to win a merch bundle – bring back your full green and clear bag to sort at the NiftyBins.
Bronze: A chance to win Co op tokens to use off site– bring back any bag (you could reuse your shopping bags), unwanted camping equipment or food to the recycling points.
Our dedicated FBI agents (festival bin inspectors) will be chatting with everyone in the campsites about our recycling initiatives so look out for them and say hey.
Green bag – Paper, card, cans, food tins, tetra packs, cartons, plastic bottles, general plastic containers, newspapers, cardboard, beer cases.
Clear bag – crisp packets, plastic bags, straws, wet wipes and other bits of soft plastics.
The FBI need you as an agent of awareness in music festivals across the UK and Ireland this summer! Are you eco-minded? A Jedi recycler? Then join the Niftybins Zero-waste Agents. Our FBI (Festival Bin Inspector) events are Download, Latitude, Reading, Rize and Electric Picnic. Volunteer six hours a day for four days at the festival and help a great environmental cause.
Contact us today by emailing [email protected], we would love to hear from all you Eco Warriors.
We run a three-bin system at the festival, which means every bin station in the campsite and main arena will be formed by 3 bins:
COMPOST – When you buy food from the traders, everything your food comes in is compostable so plates, cutlery and napkins can be placed in the compost bins along with the food scraps. Please make sure NO PLASTIC goes into the compost.
RECYCLE – Plastic bottles, aluminium cans, newspapers, magazines and clean and dry cardboard (no used greasy pizza boxes as these do not recycle).
GENERAL WASTE – There should be minimal left over that goes into General Waste.
Green Machine’s ethos is simple, “To contribute to sustainability and minimize landfill at all events whilst giving accessibility and equality to disabled and disadvantaged people”. Green Machine provide us with hard working and fun volunteers who support our sustainability team in reducing waste and spreading the message to the public about recycling at our music festivals.
Every butt has to be picked up by hand, so it would be awesome if you did not flick your cigarette and put it out before you bin it.
We have joined forces with the Greenpeace events team this summer to help festival-goers stem the tide of plastic pollution which is one of the greatest threats to our oceans. All plastic bottles and cups bought at Reading will have a 10p refundable deposit.
Smirnoff red cups are also included as part of the cup return scheme.
10 x cups and bottles = £1.
1 x full recycling bag of bottles = £5.
Up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enters the oceans every year. That’s a truck load of rubbish every minute, which will take centuries to degrade and be impossible to fully clean up. To reduce plastic pollution, Greenpeace is working towards the elimination of single-use plastic packaging in the UK, and has been campaigning for the government to introduce a UK-wide deposit return scheme for all drinks containers.
Last year you returned a humungous 250,000 plastic bottles and cups, ever wondered what happened to them? Have a look here. Now a Deposit Return Scheme is going to be introduced in the UK on plastic bottles – Result!
Volunteer with Greenpeace
If you want to be part of the DRS Crew you can apply here.
Once again, Greenpeace will be running the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for cups and bottles at Reading Festival. They are looking for some keen, engaged and enthusiastic volunteers to join them. If you are interested please click here for more information and to access the application form.
Tap water is free. Please feel free to refill your bottles at the taps provided.
When packing ready for the festival weekend, remember to pack wisely and only bring essential items, please do not bring any single use plastic (plastic bottles are allowed).
If you do bring your own tent we ask you to please take your it along with any other camping equipment home with you. If you leave it in the field it will most likely end up in landfill or incineration.
If you have any broken or unwanted tents chairs, gazebos, empty batteries, unopened tins of food after the festival, please take them to the Nifty Recycling Points.
If you want to donate your tent to charity, take it to your local charity shop. Please don’t leave it in the field.
The FBI need you as an agent of awareness in music festivals across the UK and Ireland this summer! Are you eco-minded? A Jedi recycler? Then join the Niftybins Zero-waste Agents. Our FBI (Festival Bin Inspector) events are Download, Latitude, Reading, Leeds, Rize and Electric Picnic. Volunteer six hours a day for four days at the festival and help a great environmental cause.
Contact us today by emailing [email protected], we would love to hear from all you Eco Warriors.
We put together a salvage operation after the festival for organisations to collect some of the perfectly reusable camping equipment that is left behind therefore reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill or incineration.
This is an opportunity for charities and community groups to come to the festival site on the Monday and Tuesday after the show and help save what they can. Email [email protected] for more information, quoting Reading Salvage in the subject line.
Energy generation is one of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide emissions globally and in the UK.
All of our tower and festoon lights is 100% LED. LED lights are 95% more environmental friendly than fluorescent and incandescent lights. 95% of the energy in LEDs is converted into light and only 5% is wasted as heat, however fluorescent lights convert 95% of energy to heat and only 5% into light.
Last year Reading festival used two hybrid generators to power the white campsite. These use renewable energy from the sun to charge up batteries to power the areas more efficiently.
If you want to hire a tent rather than bring your own, Kip N’ Go offer affordable pre-pitched tents.
For 2018 festival goers will no longer be able to bring their own firewood into the campsites. We are doing this to assist our own sustainability policy, as well as support the local Air Quality Action Plan.
This does not mean that we are banning campfires as we know how much you love them! You will still be able to purchase firewood from our onsite sellers and enjoy your campfires as usual.
A lot of wood comes treated with a high water content and this causes air pollution from the smoke. The wood we sell on site is dried and has a ultra low water content which makes it much more sustainable. We do ban large fires though and please do not burn anything else on the campfires – plastic and synthetic fabrics release many harmful toxic chemicals into the air, that we all then breath in.
Please note that firewood will stop being on sale at 6pm on Sunday, and that campfires are not permitted on Sunday after 8pm.