Bluedot’s unique nature as a celebration of planet Earth is thanks to our love for the world around us, and a deep desire to protect and nurture it for future generations. We incorporate the concept of ‘Spaceship Earth’ – a world view that humans should work together harmoniously to look after the planet.

Alongside our sustainability initiatives, we’ve also invited key names within the field of climate change to join us to highlight the future of our blue dot. Scroll down for our initiatives, which we put in place to allow bluedot to take place with as minimal an impact on the planet as possible.

OUR INITIATIVES

At bluedot, we’re working closely with our friends at Jodrell Bank exploring how sustainability plays a central role in all our work across the festival and beyond. From being one of the first festivals in the UK to use all LED festoon lighting in our inaugural year, to using a vast 15 acre wildlife refuge as our home at Jodrell Bank, both us and the team at the Observatory work hard to reduce waste and minimise our carbon footprint at the festival.

While we work hard to put sustainability at the heart of festival production, a key part of our overarching public mission is ‘to highlight the fragility of planet Earth’.

BALANCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

Offering festival goers the choice to make a ‘Carbon Balancing’ donation when they buy their tickets. We give our staff, contractors and artists the opportunity to do the same with Ecolibrium [LINK https://ecolibrium.earth/], a festival industry collaborative charity.. We invest 100% of these carbon balancing funds in renewable energy with Ecolibrium

We also encourage car sharing and urge anyone travelling to Bluedot to consider this option.

NO SINGLE-USE PLASTICS

We’re working alongside the AIF to ban single-use plastics at the festival. Removing the use of plastic straws, plastic containers, plastic cutlery and single serve sachets of salt, pepper, sugar or sauce from food traders.

All water and soft drinks onsite will be sold in cans rather than single use PET plastic. We encourage our festival goers to bring their own refillable water bottle for use onsite. We encourage staff and artists to also bring a reusable water bottle and do not give out or sell plastic water bottles anywhere on the event site! 

ZERO WASTE TO LANDFILL

0% of our waste will be going to landfill. We’ll be providing extensive recycling opportunities across the festival site which we’ll separate at source, sending less to incinerators. All food waste will be separated from other waste across the site, to then be composted.

We’ll be working to salvage any food waste from traders and donate to the local community.

REFILLABLE WATER BOTTLES

Numerous refill stations will be located across the campsites and Main Arena so that you can top up your bottle with ease.

ALTERNATIVE POWER SUPPLIES

Where possible, generators will be replaced with Hybrid generators with fuel monitoring to give us the data to burn less fuel at future festivals.

ABANDONED CAMPING EQUIPMENT

We are working with the Association Of Independent Festivals on their ‘Take Your Tent Home’ and ‘Say No To Single Use’ campaigns. We also provide an onsite local food bank collection for leftover sealed food from campsites and traders.

RECYCLED WRISTBANDS

Where possible our wristbands will be made from from recycled plastics.

TRAVEL TO BLUEDOT

Bluedot is part of an unprecedented festival industry initiative, which aims to account for the carbon emissions of audience travel. 63% of our festival’s carbon footprint is audience travel. A fixed donation has been added to all advanced/on the day campervan and parking tickets for bluedot all of which will be interested in renewable energy and/or carbon offset schemes. We’re proud to be able to say that 100% of bluedot’s audience travel emissions are offset. Watch the video below or find out more HERE.

Last year, your Carbon Balancing donations contributed to an incredible project in the UK, including a community owned wind-turbine in the Forest of Dean that supplies clean electricity to the local community. The 500KW wind turbine creates 1,550 MWh per year, powering 350 local homes with clean electricity and saving 731 tonnes of CO2 each year. The project also offers a fund to support local projects that are working to build community resilience, especially around reducing fuel poverty through energy efficiency and education.

CYCLE TO BLUEDOT

Reduce your carbon footprint and pedal to bluedot! We’ll be announcing details of our Cycle To Bluedot scheme soon, including details of what’s included in your cycle booking.

JODRELL BANK’S INITIATIVES

Our home Jodrell Bank Observatory is committed to sustainability and works towards the University of Manchester’s sustainable goals. Highlights from the Discovery Centre’s list of sustainable actions include:

  • Using a hybrid vehicle for staff use, for example when traveling to educational outreach and community engagement sessions.
  • Using an electric buggy on site.
  • Buildings installed with wind catchers, air source heat pumps and LED lighting.
  • Offices installed with movement sensor lighting to reduce energy consumption and automatic windows to ensure heat conservation.
  • Recycling bins across the site and a green waste recycling scheme for the gardens and grounds
  • Maintaining the diverse ecology of the 35 acres of gardens and arboretum at Jodrell Bank.
  • Working with local suppliers to promote local organic and sustainable food production in relation to the Jodrell Bank cafe.
  • In recognition of its commitment to sustainability, Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre recently received a Silver Award from Green Tourism. It was also awarded World Heritage Site status in July 2019.