Keep It Green

Bestival was a very proud recipient of an 'Outstanding' Greener Festival Award in 2009 and a 'Highly Commended' Greener Festival Award in 2010.

This year we are building on this still further to make Bestival an even greener and more environmentally friendly event. We need your help here too though. Please follow these simple rules and do your bit...

1/ DRINK SOME TEA FOR FREE
Yes that's right, FREE TEA!  All you need to do to claim your free cup of tea is to pick up the litter in and around your tent, pop it all into the freely available black waste and green recycling (cans, plastic bottles, newspapers, leaflets, cartons) bags and take a full(ish) bag to the recycling pen next to your nearest Campsite Hub. A friendly Green Team member will make you a fresh brew to say thanks. Simple. And you can do that each and every day if you like.

2/ A TENT IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR BESTIVAL!
Please please please pack up your tent and take it home with you at the end of the festival. Tents are very re-usable but utterly un-recyclable so those left behind have to be sent to a landfill site. Please be a better person and help us out here. Thank you.

3/ USE PUBLIC TRANSPORT OR CAR SHARE
The greatest negative environmental impact of any festival is caused by transport, mostly by cars. In fact approximately 80% of a festival's carbon footprint is caused by customer vehicle travel to and from the festival. It's really very easy to get to Bestival by public transport (check the rest of this 'Practical Info' section of our website for more info) and it will also be much cheaper for you!

Coach is the most environmentally friendly way of getting to Bestival.  Big Green Coach are making it even greener and planting 2 trees for every full coach they bring to the Isle of Wight for Bestival. www.biggreencoach.co.uk/bestival

If you must come by car though, please fill it up with people! Head over to the Bestival's FestivalBUDI car sharing page and get yourselves signed up. If you have spare seats in your car and if you’re driving an average sized petrol car, having four people in it will bring your CO2 emissions per person to less than travelling by train! So it really does make a difference if fill up all the seats. And you'll save money too by sharing the travel costs between you.

4/ MINIMISE PACKAGING
Please unpack all unnecessary cardboard and plastic around crates of beer / airbeds / tents before you leave home and avoid bringing plastic carrier bags with you.

5/ NO GLASS
Absolutely NO GLASS is allowed on site. Please decant wine / vodka etc into plastic bottles or it will be confiscated at the gate. No exceptions.

6/ IN THE MUSIC ARENAS
There will be clusters of colour-coded bins all over the shop. Drop your cans in one, plastic bottles in another and then everything else can go in the black topped bin.

7/ IN THE CAMPSITES
There will be waste & recycling pens on all the main thoroughfares with loads of green and black bin bags tied onto them. Green for recycling (cans, plastic bottles, newspapers, leaflets, cartons) and Black for all other waste. Please grab one of each, take em back to your tent and then bring them back to the pens when they're getting full. And if you bring em back to a pen next to a Campsite Hub you'll get a FREE CUP OF TEA for your wonderful efforts.

8. EARN EASY MONEY TO BUY MORE BEER
All beer cups and cans purchased from our bars are worth 10p each. Collect a load and return them to one of our cup and can return points and you could easily have enough money to buy yourself and your mates a round.

9. COLOURFUL COMPOST LOOS
The colourful hand-painted loos you'll see around site are cleaner, less stinky and require no water so please use them whenever you can. And your poo gets converted into compost to grow stuff afterwords, which is weird but kinda neat too!

10. THAT SAID, ANY LOO WILL DO... PLEASE JUST USE ONE OF THEM
Blokes (& some ladies)... please don't piss anywhere you feel like. Its very important that you use one of our toilets. Pissing against a fence might be ok in your back garden but the concentration of loads of you doing it on the Bestival site contaminates the land and kills off the wildlife.

11. PLEASE DON'T WASTE WATER
Bestival doesn't run off the mains, we have to bring in our own water and store it in a large reservoir. Please do use the water to drink and wash but be careful to not leave taps running. And please report any leaking standpipes to your Campsite Hub.

12. CHARGE YOUR MOBILE PHONE FOR FREE WITH 10:10!
10:10, the carbon-cutting people, have their own tent in the Tomorrow's World area of the site where you can charge your mobile for FREE via Solar and Pedal Power. They’ll also be able to help you cut your own carbon once the festival's finished.

Bestival loves you very much for reading this.