People love to get away from home, immerse themselves in a temporary, vibrant community, and get lost in the music or the stage shows or the food found at summertime festivals. And while all this merriment can be a fabulous way to escape, the planet largely bears the brunt of festivals ills:

• Too much garbage and waste
• Energy-intensive shows and displays
• Ecosystem destruction as event-goers trample local vegetation and disturb animals with higher-than average noise levels
• Junk give-aways that are neither useful or well-made so they get throw away immediately after the event
• Emissions-intensive travel to get to the events

Characteristics of green festivals:

To turn these environmental difficulties into opportunities to do better by the planet, some festivals are going green by implementing some or all of these strategies:

• Awareness and money raising: Green festivals can help to raise money and awareness about environmental projects by promoting eco-actions and donations to worthy green causes.
• Green power: As it is, outdoor festivals use a lot less energy than indoor ones, but many festivals these days are opting to power their operations using green energy, such as that derived from solar, wind, and geothermal sources. That means they purchase the equivalent amount of energy used for the festival from local utilities that supply green energy. Some even erect their own temporary solar panels to power various stages.
• Sustainable menus: Helping to expose people to eco-friendly foods is one of the aims of greener festivals. As such, many offer organic, vegetarian foods, locally-grown options, and things like that.
• Transit: Getting to festivals can add the greatest environmental burden to an event. To mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions expended by vehicles and planes, green festivals are encouraging the use of trains by placing the location of the event nearer to major stops. Others have established free, guarded bike parking areas. And still others give event-goers the option of off-setting their transportation with carbon offsets and credits.
• Minimizing trash: There are many efforts being attempted to reduce the amount of food-related waste at festivals. Some have instituted a deposit/refund for the use of bottles and cups used at beverage stands, while others are sure to compost all organics and food leftovers.
• Waste handling: All green festivals will have comprehensive recycling programs for diverting waste away from the landfill. That means collecting all glass, metal, plastic, and paper waste to be taken to a recycling facility. Some even have programs for collecting things like sleeping bags, chairs, and clothes that would otherwise be discarded after the event.
• Green vendors: One of the other perks of eco-friendly festivals is being able to advertise green products, like eco-clothing, green furniture, and the like. You never know the treasures youâ??ll find!

Here are some eco-friendly festivals you may want to check out:

• A Greener Festival listings
• Bonnaroo – Manchester, Tennessee
• Green Festival – DC or San Francisco
• Organic Planet Festival – Humboldt County, CA
• Planet Friendly listings – Canada & US
• Roskilde Festival - Denmark
• Wanderlust – Squaw Valley, CA

Guest Post: Geordie is an active blogger and has been guest blogging for a number of eco websites and tech sites. This post came out of hearing that her mates are going to v festival and wondering just how green a virgin ran festival is.

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A look at the offline and online offering of Vbites

I popped down to the opening of Heather Mills Vegan cafe ‘Vbites‘ on Saturday as Iâ??d heard whispers of its opening for a few months and fancied seeing what she had done with the old fish eatery that used to be there before. Another think that I wanted to see was how ‘Vbites’ was promoting itself, being interested in media and the way ethical ventures make that leap from hippy idealism (something I have struggled with myself) to cool rich media and an understanding of social capitol.

The opening itself was as my actor friend pointed out “a little frayed around its vegan edges”, with a very loud Glenn Miller band for the old folks, a dodgy microphone for Heathers opening speech and more ‘old media’ journalists that you could shake a stick at.

Heather however looks superb and I was at the front cheering her on as she appeared on top of the building relaxing against the ‘Vbites’ diner style sign. I’ve been an admirer of Heather for years, ever since she appeared on the Big Breakfast and described how she lost her leg by being hit by a police motorcycle. The fact that she was married to a pop star bla bla, doesnâ??t really interest me and I much prefer to read about her animal welfare exploits.

As I was leaving I collared one of their PR girls and said that Iâ??d like her to guest blog and that she needed some advice on her website. I was tempted to grab Heather as she popped out the back of Vbites and beg her to get a new developer, but she was on the phone so I thought Iâ??d leave it.

Now, the Vbites website:

Vbites website

Whatâ??s wrong with the website:

• The menu does not contain keywords specific to the campaign
• The content has not real direction on any of the pages
• No specific menu pages
• Their are no social networking links on the homepage
• No RSS feed for subscriptions to the newsletter
• No real calls to action
• No SEO across the site based on the lack on title tags, keyword inclusion etc
• Lack of pages on the site, if the sitemap is to be trusted
• The press and media page has no rich media or any real content
• The lack of humanity on the site is frightening – add some images of the place, the workers, heather, kids eating lunches, the skaters outside
• There are so many opportunities here for some great social media, so many aspects to the cafe that can be drawn upon to make it both an on and offline success.
• No internal linking
• More inbound links from relevant sources

I do find it unfortunate that allot of vegan and ethical sites are missing the basics of good design and SEO, it doesnâ??t seam important in the grand scheme of things but it does make a profound difference as to how users see you. Any site, no matter what it is saying needs to be making a media statement about its efforts, services or products… it is the fundamentals of it being a website and with all the competition out there, sites like Vbites need to stand out from the crowd or risk just becoming a dead weight online page that tarnishes the offline appeal of a great concept.

I’ll think of a few nice little ideas for Vbites social media and see if we canâ??t get it moving.

One last thing that I think would be nice for Vbites to is to add ‘deliveries’ to its offerings, swift deliveries of ‘Mrs. swirly’ vegan ice cream for example.

I did have difficulty finding any articles to add below this, as it seams most of the press that turned up were only there to slag her off, a bit pathetic on a sunny day to head down there just for that, but … who am i to judge.

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Emma Thompson and Alistair Macgowan are some of the first to buy up plots of land on the ear marked site of Heathrows 3rd runway.

The government would use its powers to issue compulsory purchase orders for the plots but lawyers said yesterday that the existence of thousands of owners would make this process time-consuming and expensive. Similar tactics have been used successfully to protect tropical forests.

Emma Thompson said: “I don’t understand how any government remotely serious about committing to reversing climate change can even consider these ridiculous plans. It’s laughably hypocritical. That’s why we’ve bought a plot on the runway. We’ll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables.”

McGowan said: “The government is sticking two fingers up to the environment and the people of this world. By giving this runway the go-ahead Gordon Brown is effectively holding a giant blow torch to the polar ice-caps and saying ‘Melt, Melt !’”

At full capacity, an expanded Heathrow would become the biggest single source of C02 emissions in the country. It would emit nearly 27m tonnes of CO2 every year â?? equivalent to the emissions of 57 of the least polluting countries in the world combined.

Yesterday, Greenpeace said that it took them nearly a year to identify the land and buy it from under the nose of BAA. “We had to have a cover. We pretended we wanted land to set up a donkey sanctuary.”

Thousands of green protestors from ‘climate rush’ are set to stage a picnic protest tonight in the middle of terminal one, in an on going protest against the airports affect on climate change.

BAA spokesman Damon Hunt said yesterday: ‘We’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get in contact with the protesters to find out things like how many people will be there so that we can facilitate a proper and peaceful protest as they are planning to do it in a terminal at an operational time.

‘But they refuse to speak to us or the police. They are hard to get hold of and do have a Facebook page which BAA have used to try to contact them but we’re getting nothing back at all.

hundreds of passengers delayed at Heathrow

One activist, who declined to be named, said: ‘If BAA has heavy security checks at the entrances, that will delay thousands of passengers anyway and the disruption will attract the media attention we seek.

‘This is not meant to be a ‘picnic’ for the authorities. The environment is too important to ignore.’

Another said: ‘If we fail to get noticed, then we have failed.’

The group say that they will be staging their protest in the terminal from 7pm tonight until the government make their decision about the new runway.

RawFood Open Day 2009

DATE: 31st of January 2009
TIME: 12:15pm – 6:00pm
LOCATION: Brighton
TICKET PRICE: Day Pass is now £14.99

Claire and I will be attending Total Raw Food’s open day in Brighton at the end of the month.

We don’t eat raw, but when we found out about it, we thought it sounded like a really fun, interesting day where we could pick up all sorts of eco hints and tips to alleviate our eco-worrying, and hopefully yours as well!

So to that end I thought I would give a heads up to anyone else who might be interested in coming along.

All you need to attend is a ticket and an open mind ;-D

Raw Food

What is Raw Food All About?

There’s quite a lot too it but basically it is what it says – you eat raw food – no cooking, no pasteurizing (no, you don’t eat meat or dairy – it’s like Veganism only with cooking removed as an option.) I will blog more about my experiences with raw foodism at another time, but to find out more now, why not visit this part of the Total Raw Food site to get a good overview.

Total Raw Food

About Total Raw Food

TotalRawFood.com is run by Tom Fenton, in association with his wife Jessica, the Raw Life Style Coach, who have both written celebrated ebooks on raw vegan lifestyles.

The site itself provides information, advice and products to help people to live healthier, more ethical and eco friendly lifestyles and offers people the opportunity to gain access to some personalised Raw Life Style Coaching to boot.

Total Raw Food Open Day!

Total Raw Food Open Day

TotalRawFood are celebrating their third year in business by moving into new premises, where the Barefoot Doctor will be their guest speaker and formally open Total Raw Food’s first open day.

There will be a raw food recipe demo, by Jess, the Raw Food Life Coach; the chance to buy many raw food products that are usually available at totalrawfood.com without having to pay for postage + there will be a 10% discount on a number of items; there will also be many many opportunities to gain expert opinions, advice and insights into all sorts of ethical, health and eco-friendly lifestyle issues while you mingle and network with like-minded people.

Total Raw Food Open Day will be held at:
1a Prospect House, Hyde Business Park, Brighton, BN2 4JE (Off Lewes Road)

For further information about raw foodism, please scroll down to the articles at the end of this post.

However if you would prefer to learn to receive information via the medium of song, check these out!

“How Do You Have a Social Life with Raw Food…???” Angela Stokes

Do they know about raw food – Angela Stokes

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