The team behind the Greener Festival Award have launched the Greener Event Award, as part of an expansion of services to the broader events industry, conferences, venues and sport.

The first of its kind, the award involves independent site assessment, verification and certification of environmental actions at events and venues. Participants in the awards receive tailored recommendations to make improvements year on year.

Since 2007, A Greener Festival have assessed over 400 festivals across five continents, which in 2017 includes Glastonbury Festival (UK), Roskilde Festival (DK), Bayou Boogaloo (USA), Primavera Sound (ES) and We Love Green (FR). 65 AGF assessors from environmental and event management backgrounds have been trained since the Awards relaunch in 2015. This wealth of experience is now being brought to the wider events industry to help reduce the environmental impact and increase the benefits and potential of improved sustainability in the live sector.

“There are very tangible opportunities for events and venues to save resources and money through actions that benefit the environment. There is an expressed interest and now overwhelming response that events want to find and act on these opportunities and share best practice. That is where we can help,” commented Claire O’Neill, co founder of A Greener Festival.

The first Greener Event Award assessment took place last week in Utrecht, Netherlands, at the Spring Performing Arts Festival, a city based festival which takes place over ten days across 11 venues. This is a part of a suite of events to be assessed following partnership between the City of Utrecht, A Greener Festival and Green Events Netherlands, designed to help the city to achieve their sustainability targets.

The expansion of the Award has received a welcoming reception from event organisers, with ten events already signed up to be assessed including Confex & Event Production Show (UK), Doolin Festival (IE), Wildscreen (UK), Festout (UK), the Moscow Flower Show (RS), Festival & Outdoor Events Show (UK), Eurosonic Noordeslag (NL) and the Showmans’ Show (UK).

Duncan Siegle, portfolio director at Mash Media, said: “Green issues are at a crucial stage in the events sector so it’s great to see AGF enter into the conference and exhibition markets. Given Mash Media’s position as the leading publisher for these markets, as well as the organiser of key industry shows Confex and EPS, it is essential for us to embrace this, help promote it to the industries and work on improving our own green credentials.”

The Greener Event Award assessment is open to all kinds of events including conferences, trade fairs and expo’s, arena shows, theatre productions, sport events, ceremonies and multi venue city events. It is also possible for venues, city parks and arenas to participate in the award scheme, as applicants to The Greener Venue Award and Greener Arena Award. These event spaces can significantly influence the potential environmental performance of the events that they host.

The broader industry support the awards expansion including UK Music, the Event Industry Forum, Production Services Association, Global Green USA, Powerful Thinking, Green Event Netherlands, Young Leadership Council and Green Operations Europe.

A list of previous winners can be found here.