Volunteer on the Green Team!

Help us save the planet, one festival at a time – We’re looking for volunteers who are full of energy, passionate about the environment and enjoy engaging with people about green issues.

As a member of our Green Team you will receive a crew wristband, get to camp in crew camping with like-minded people and access to hot showers and nice toilets. You will also gain valuable experience in the sustainable events field, whilst taking time to enjoy the festival when not volunteering.

Applications will open in early 2023, please email gmessengers@festivalrepublic.com for further information in the meanwhile.

Building on the success of 2022’s first ever Eco Campsite, which was left absolutely spotless, we are expanding it this year! Sign up now to access Reading Festival’s Eco Campsite, which will be a near to Red Gate and Green Gate for 2023!

We must tell the truth about the climate emergency: Climate change is happening now, our past actions are the cause, and our future actions can help to alter the outcome.

Will you join our call for action?

The Reading Eco Campsite is for like-minded people who want to make a difference: You live life with the planet in mind, and want to stay in a clean, green field for a festival you’ll remember. This is the campsite for you.

Your campsite will have extra bonuses exclusive to the campers choosing to stay here, where everything that is brought in is taken away again, and the field is left as it was found.

Create Your Future. Stay in the Reading Eco Campsite in 2023.

The Reading Eco Campsite is at no additional cost and only requires pre-registration for every guest to sign up to the following principles:

• All guests agree to respect their fellow campers; Be inclusive and curious, talk about what is important to you, and enjoy the festival together.

• All guests agree to respect the environment, avoiding littering and protecting the natural environment – Separate your recyclable materials, use the toilets provided, and don’t cause excess waste.

• All guests agree to leave the campsite exactly as they found it; Everyone here has joined the call, take your tent home, and show the way forward.

Create Your Future. Stay in the Reading Eco Campsite in 2023.

BOOK YOUR READING ECO CAMP TICKET HERE

In order to access the Reading Eco Campsite, persons must also hold a valid weekend ticket to Reading Festival 2022, as such it is understood that you must adhere to the festival terms and conditions. This registration form entitles you to book space in Eco Campsite only and you will be given an additional Reading Eco Campsite wristband to access the area.

Music Festivals have an impact on the environment because of the transport taken, energy used, waste generated, water used, as well as the food and drink consumed. The Show Must Go On Report 2020 shows that the biggest impacts are travel, energy and waste.

As set out in our Charter [https://www.readingfestival.com/charter/], we have a responsibility to preserve the live music experience for generations to come and have the opportunity to use our platform to inspire global environmental action.

We have signed up to the Vision 2025 pledge and are working towards a 50% reduction in event related greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 (from 2014 levels).

From 2012 to 2021, Reading Festival participated in Creative Green Certification. This is an external assessment by Julie’s Bicycle, a charity who support the creative industries to act on climate change, to measure our understanding, commitment and improvement towards environmental sustainability. In 2019 we achieved five out of five stars, you can read the report here. But it doesn’t stop there! Year on year we measure our scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions. In 2022 we made the switch from diesel generators to HVO (Hydrotreated vegetable oil) which emits up to 90% less Greenhouse Gas emissions. We’ve made it easy for you to have the best time at Reading while reducing your environmental impact The Creative Green report can be downloaded here. See what you can do below.

Please see our Festival Charter here, which details our commitments to Environmental Sustainability and a number of other areas.

Travelling to the festival makes up at least 80% of a festival’s carbon footprint (Source: The Show Must Go On Report, 2020 [https://www.vision2025.org.uk/the-show-must-go-on/]). To help reduce the Reading travel carbon footprint, you could travel by lower carbon forms of travel such as coach, train with direct shuttle buses to the festival, or carshare to help reduce this.

See below for low carbon options, and our Travel page for all options here.

BIG GREEN COACH

Big Green Coach are back as official travel partner to Reading 2023 and this year, all services are carbon neutral!

Take the hassle out of planning your journey and get dropped inside the festival gates, no one gets you closer. They are running Weekend and Day Return services from more than 35 pick-up locations.

Weekend Services:

Choose to arrive Wednesday, Thursday or Friday and they’ll get you home on Monday morning (feeling super fresh).

Day Returns:

Just heading in for the day? Big Green Coach will drop you at the gates before music starts and won’t leave until the action is over. Party hard and sleep all the way home! Forget hotels, trains, and shuttle buses. Leave the car at home and forget being designated driver.

TRAIN

It is really easy to get to Reading by train. Reading train station is a 15-20 minute walk from the festival site. There are many routes from throughout the country to the station, including from London Paddington.

CAR SHARE

If you are driving to the festival, sign up with Go Car Share [gocarshare.com/reading] to save money on a parking pass and park right at the front in the Priority Car Park for free.

Looking for a lift? Find awesome people who’ll drive you to the festival! Travel green and save money.

For those who do travel by car, we donate £1 to Trees for Cities to fund local tree planting projects.

We have committed to reducing our carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. Most of our on-site emissions come from how we power the festival.

In 2022, we powered 98% of the festival with HVO biofuel, a form of renewable fuel that reduces emissions between 75 – 90% compared to the regular fuel that powers events. We are also looking into how to make Reading Festival fully electric in future. Click here for more.

We have put the following in place to reduce single use plastic at Reading Festival:

– All our cups are paper, and we have had a deposit return scheme in place since 2007,

– We have Pepsi Max bars that avoid plastic bottles completely, serving your drink straight into a paper cup and offering refills,

– All our soft drinks and bottled water are made from at least 50% recycled plastic,

– Plastic cutlery and straws have been banned since 2009, and only compostable food containers are allowed, – Bulk condiment bottles must be used by our food vendors instead of single-use sachets.

Please refill your water bottles at the taps provided. Please bring a refillable bottle with you to refill.

View a list of everything you can and can’t bring, here.

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:

We have Recycling Stations in the campsite where you can recycle just like you do at home – with separate pods for recycling and non recycling.

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).

NOT RECYCLABLE For anything else. There should be minimal left that is not recyclable.

Head over to the campsite Recycling Points to collect green recycling bags. Fill them up with cans and bottles, bring them back and you can be in for a chance to win some amazing prizes.

Say no to single-use and reuse your tent. Buy a durable tent that you can use again each year, it will save you money in the long run – see our ultimate guide to buying a tent here.

Only bring what you can take home with you. When packing ready for the festival weekend, remember to pack wisely and only bring essential items. See our essential packing guide here.

Pink Moon offer pre-pitched tents or if you’re bringing your own tent we ask you to take it home, along with any other camping equipment.Did you know that tents are the equivalent of 8,750 plastic straws, or 250 pint cups. Say no to single use, take your tent home!

The reality is that abandoned tents are sent to energy from waste because it is impossible to recycle or reuse them. If you have any broken tents chairs, gazebos, empty batteries, unopened tins of food after the festival, please take them to the Recycling Points.

Every cup and bottle sold in the arena has a 10p deposit included in the price. Collect 10 and take them to our cup recycling stations for some cold hard cash.

Minimum deposit return = £1.

There is also a reverse vending machine in the Co-op store for any bottles bought there, many more prizes are to be won.

CAMPSITE BOTTLE DEPOSIT – REVERSE VENDING MACHINES

As part of our commitment to increase recycling, all plastic bottles sold at the Co-op campsite supermarket will have a refundable deposit added to the price, campers are able to return the bottles to the reverse vending machine in exchange for a voucher to spend in the Co-op on-site store. The bottles collected at each festival will then go on to be recycled to create bottles for Co-op’s own brand bottled water.

We coordinate 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 energy from waste.

This is an opportunity for charities and community groups to come to the festival site on the Monday after the show and help save what they can. Please email salvagers@festivalrepublic.com to register your interest.

Food-related emissions make up to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, we worked with the London School of Economics to calculate the carbon footprint of the food sold by certain food traders at the festival, giving each menu a simple three-level carbon footprint rating for customers to see the impact of the food options and make a positive choice!

We are looking to implement a food carbon footprinting initiative again in 2023, please check back here closer to the date of the festival for more details.