Sustainability

Last year, we doubled the amount of beach cleans completed during the festival, adding in cleans at Great Western and Porth Beaches! 164 brilliant volunteers spent 48 hours helping us to recover litter during our 24  beach cleans. These amazing Boardies Crew continue to help us do our best for the amazing place we call home. 

5,700 of you also helped us collect a bag of rubbish to get your litter bond back – do you reckon we can double it this year?

In 2022 the Industry ‘More Than Music’ Report found that Boardmasters was one of the leading festivals in the UK when it came to their ambitions and social and environmental commitments. Its findings were highly praised by the Association of Independent Festivals, Association of Festival Organisers and Industry Press. How cool is that!

We wanted to share with you some of the things we have planned this year, alongside sharing with you the awesome work that has been happening behind the scenes since last year. But to get involved in 2024 you can:

• Leave nothing but footprints: Keep your camp clean and take your tent home

• Protect Nature: Help us with beach cleans and make sure you get your litter bond back

• Think about your travel: Use public transport and the shuttle bus to make new friends!

Our amazing Green team is a group of friendly sustainability enthusiasts who embody the ethos of Boardmasters ensuring people are tidying up after themselves, whilst still having a good time.

They help us to protect the Cornish Coastline and create a greener, cleaner festival!

 Trebelsue Farm, Watergate Bay and Fistral Beach combine to make an awesome festival site – and we want to look after it, so the Green Team helps us make a positive impact throughout the festival, helping our festival goers leave nothing but footprints.

Keep an eye out for them to help you get your litter bond back and share other ways you can have a more positive impact on this Boardmasters. You can find them in the campsites, info points & on the beach, cleaning up.

Want to join the team? Find out more and apply here! 

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to leave no trace at Boardmasters – our Green Team will be in the campsites handing out bin bags, and at waste points make it easy for you to tidy up as you go before you head in to party.

• Look out for our clearly marked recycle & waste bins

• Take your tents home and keep your camp clean

• Don’t wee (or worse) on the farm, we have enough toilets!

• Use our water stations for free refills

• Dispose of vapes carefully, vapes = waste so take them home or dispose of them in a vape bin.  

We started the Litter Bond scheme in 2018, and it’s been a roaring success, but we know we can do better. Did you know that if you give us two filled bags of waste you get your £10 back? Our aim is to give half off you back your litter bond this year at the Litter Bond exchange – find the drop off point on the app. Do you think we can do it?

Using the right recycling bins and not dropping litter on the ground helps us immensely in managing our waste as a festival. We are helping you by providing larger waste bins and in more areas around the site – as well as having our GreenTeam and MyCause volunteers on hand to help you.

If you smoke or use vapes, please be aware how dangerous this can be to the local environment and wildlife.  Throw your cigarette butts in the bin, and make sure to either take your empty vapes home or dispose of them in a vape bin.

Vapes = waste. There are safety issues with the lithium batteries inside them prone to causing fires if damaged when binned in general waste or recycling. Batteries hidden inside vapes can cause fires if crushed or damaged in general recycling or waste streams. Vapes must be recycled separately.

Don’t forget to bring a reusable bottle so you can get access to the free water points throughout the weekend and keep hydrated.

Added bonus is that it also helps us towards reducing plastic waste onsite. And if you forget your bottle, don’t worry – you can buy your own Boardmasters exclusive one at the merch stall!

Last year, we started using something called HVO fuel  (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) at Boardmasters. Normal diesel fuel is derived from fossil fuels, such as crude oil, which are non-renewable resources. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change.​

HVO, on the other hand, is a renewable fuel made from vegetable oils or animal fats. It can be produced from waste fats and oils, which helps reduce reliance on fossil fuels and decreases the overall carbon emissions associated with its use. It also has a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to normal diesel fuel.​

We managed to use 78% HVO fuel in 2023 and we’re aiming for it to be even higher this year.  

Did you know that 80% of festival emissions come from Audience travel!

If everyone who we transported to Boardmasters 2023 travelled individually, the passenger miles our customers travelled would have totaled 1,891, 693 miles. Or…77 times around the earth!

By car sharing, or better still, using public transport or cycling to the festival we can significantly reduce the amount of pollution produced. Click through to our green partners – Big Green Coach, GWR, and make us of our shuttle bus service. It also reduces traffic and queues into the festival meaning we can all get in and party quicker!

In 2023, 200, 789 kilos of carbon were saved and offset through coach travel!

Our shuttle bus service also ensures we minimise the traffic impact on the local area and the amazing community that allows our festival to happen every year. Nearly 35 THOUSAND journeys were taken on the shuttle bus last year!

In order to reduce the number of cars on the road (= traffic + emissions), we charge a re-entry fee for car parks, so it’s cheaper and more friendly to jump on our shuttle bus that runs until 4:30am.

Not only that, but the money we raise on for re-entry goes to the Boardmasters Foundation, helping us raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest in the local community projects. Find out more about the Foundation here. 

Last year we enlisted the help of betternotstop, a B Corp Certified sustainable impact and audience behaviour change agency. They have created a bespoke reporting template we can use to report and measure key metrics in our business. We are continuing to work with them for 2024 and beyond!​

They work with us pre, during and post event to coordinate the Green Team, improve our waste management and measure and review the work we are doing, and help us put together a robust reporting and action plan for future years. ​

For Boardmasters to be sustainable, we all have a duty to make sure that the land on which we call home is looked after. It’s a significant task but one we are passionate about. We cannot do it without all 220,000 visitors and people working across our sites, and there are many ways in which we ask for their help to protect our environment and the future of Boardmasters. 

Find out more about the Green Team and apply here! 

See you at the beach!