Since 2016 Download has 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 2017 we achieved an awesome four out of five stars! See our key achievements below and Read the full report here. We could not have done any of this without your help, so a huge thank you to the environmentally conscious Download community who participated in our initiatives.

Travelling to the festival makes up 80% of the total carbon emissions generated (source: The Show Must Go On Report, 2015). You could travel by public transport or carshare to help reduce this.

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 – Big Green Coach.

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.  If you don’t want to travel by car, there are other forms of lower carbon to travel to the festival such as Big Green Coach or train with direct shuttle buses to the festival.

RECYCLING CHAMPION

Thank you to everyone who participated in the recycling raffle at Download 2018, the winning raffle ticket numbers are Gold 4-4674A8B61 & Silver 4-30B3603BF

If you did not win this time you are recycling champions to us. Keep up the good work!

NIFTYBINS

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– chance to win a merch bundle – bring back your full green and clear bag to sort at the NiftyBins.

Bronze – 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

EVERY CAN COUNTS

We’ve teamed up with Every Can Counts this year who will gladly give your finished drink cans a new home.  Expect games and activities, who knew recycling could be this much fun!

THREE BIN SYSTEM

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.

FESTIVAL GREEN MACHINE

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.

BIN YOUR BUTTS

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.

REUSABLE CUPS

To minimise the waste from disposable beer cups, we are continuing to stock reusable cups at the bars in the main arena at Download.

This works in three easy steps;

Pay £2 deposit in addition to the price of your first drink. Each time you return to the bar for another drink you can swap this cup for a clean cup full of a refreshing beverage.

At the end of the night / festival you can either take your cup to the dedicated refund points (at bars 2, 4, 5, and 7) to get your £2 back or keep your cup as a souvenir. Please redeem your deposit before Sunday night to avoid disappointment.

Our creative team have designed a limited number of exclusive Festival branded cups, this is limited to no more than 30% of the total cups so the rest can be reused at other events.

CAMPSITE

CAMPSITE

BOTTLE DEPOSIT REVERSE VENDING MACHINES – COOP

As part of our commitment to increase recycling, all plastic bottles sold at the Co-op campsite village 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 on-site stores. The bottles collected at each festival will then go on to be recycled to create bottles for Co-op’s own brand bottled water.

ARENA

We have joined forces with the Greenpeace events team again 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 Download 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 48,000 plastic bottles and hundreds of you signed Greenpeace’s petition, now signed by around 337,000 members of the public who back a deposit return scheme. The petition was handed as a ‘message in a bottle’ to environment secretary Michael Gove in advance of his announcement that the government will roll out a deposit return scheme after a consultation. What a fantastic result for us to be part of!

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. We ask you to please take your tents and camping equipment home with you. If you leave it in the field it will most likely end up in landfill or incineration. If you want to hire a tent rather than bring your own, Kip n Go offer affordable tent hire options. Pink Moon also offer pre pitched tents.

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.

Salvaging applications are now closed.