If you are booked to cater for a festival, whether it is a huge affair with hundreds of thousands of attendees or a smaller, local event for a few hundred, read this article to find out how festival bosses create a green event and how you can play your part.

Environmental Case Study: Glastonbury

The Glastonbury Festival has many facets to its environmental work. It starts with its advice to festival-goers before they attend. They are urged to travel by public transport or car share, to use the many recycling bins placed around the site, use water responsibly and to only use what they need. The example the festival gives is the use of napkins from catering stalls, stating that if everyone took four napkins rather than one, that would be 450,000 additional napkins used unnecessarily.

 

This can be an issuer when performing outside catering, and one environmentally friendly solution is to stock up on our range of recyclable and biodegradable paper napkins.

 

Another way Glastonbury cuts its carbon footprint includes the 1,500 square metres of solar panels on the roof of the cattle shed, which save an estimated 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. In addition, an anaerobic digester will help to power the main Pyramid Stage of the festival, as well as the production offices and some backstage areas plus Worthy Farm and the festival offices. There are also biofuel initiatives and wind-powered areas of the site.

 

Finally, the festival has supported causes such as WaterAid, Greenpeace and Oxfam, all of which are committed to helping the world. Ticket sales for the festival have raised millions of pounds for these charities over the years.

 

Environmentally Friendly Festival Catering

 

With green issues at the forefront of many organisers’ minds, you need to make sure you are doing all you can to provide environmentally friendly festival catering. The best way to start is to make sure you have eco-friendly food packaging.

There are a number of options to choose from, including recyclable food trays and compostable food trays. We provide crepe cones, chip trays, burger trays, pie trays and many more festival food packaging solutions that can go straight into the compost and add to the richness of the earth, rather than littering it.

 

At a festival, people want to eat and then leave behind the packaging whilst they go and see the next band. Without compostable or recyclable options, this could prove an environmental disaster and, if you show up to a festival with keen environmental policies, it will not be a good look.

 

Yes, there is a lot of single-use packaging at festivals, but when you use the right products in the right way, it can prove convenient for your customers without being detrimental to the environment.

 

What to Ask Festival Organisers

When you book a catering stall at a festival, you should ask the organisers some questions about their policies so that you can prepare accordingly. Here are some queries you might want to make:

 

  • Are they composting facilities on site?
  • If so, are they for caterers, customers, or both?
  • Which materials are recyclable on-site?
  • Do materials need to be separated on-site?
  • Who supervises the recycling?
  • How many recycling points are there?

 

These will help you decide on whether to take recyclable or compostable food packaging, as well as what advice to give to customers on how to deal with their packaging once they have eaten.

 

Other Eco Possibilities

As well as using festival food packaging, you can also enter the eco festival spirit by ensuring you and your staff do as much as you can to cut your carbon footprint. Making sure you don’t leave taps running, engines ticking over, or lights shining when you don’t need to all aid your green credentials.

 

Get Festival Food Packaging

Browse our range of festival food packaging to help you feed those hungry revellers this summer. Enjoy!