Peats Ridge Festival

Building on their already impressive list of sustainability initiatives and reinforcing the festival's commitment to running the most sustainable event possible, Peats ridge is proud to announce their 2010 sustainability initiatives.

Peats Ridge is a recognised global leader in running sustainable events and has been a launching pad for the sustainable event industry worldwide. While many events are starting to green their processes Peats Ridge has been benchmarking best practice standards since 2004.

The Festival was founded with the objective of researching how an event can reduce its impact upon the environment whilst simultaneously educating its patrons on ways to live their lives more sustainably.

Peats Ridge's passion is to marry music, art and sustainability to nurture, educate and entertain their audience in the pursuit of true environmental and social sustainability. The Festival aims to explore and showcase more sustainable event management practices whilst providing a unique event made up of socially inclusive art, music, theatre and a separate area dedicated to sustainability education.

Peats Ridge is committed to constantly improving their environmental performance and becoming a testing ground for new sustainability initiatives worldwide. The Festival is currently working with several suppliers to develop new technological solutions for sustainable event management.

In 2010 Peats Ridge became the only organisation in the Southern Hemisphere to become a founding partner in the newly formed United Nations Music & Environment Initiative. The Festival has been appointed to spearhead the Technical Solutions taskforce, the aims of which are to build cross-sectoral solutions to create sustainability outcomes internationally http://www.unep.org/music_env/participants.asp

Aside from the Festival's onsite achievements, they work in a far broader capacity within the events industry to achieve their sustainability outcomes. Examples of this include engaging suppliers on key procurement issues such as biodiesel and reduced water use, presentations to the events industry, broader business and academia on sustainability issues and knowledge sharing through their online 'Model Event' portal. The Festival also regularly works with other organisations to share information and improve sustainability outcomes across the industry. Groups and events that the Festival has assisted this year include The Garden of Earthly Delights - Adelaide Fringe Festival, The John Butler Trio Tour and NSW Department of Environment & Climate Changes Hospitality Sustainability Advantage Cluster Group. The Festival is also collaborating with the NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water in benchmarking best practice standards across the industry.

The Festival site lies on private agricultural property in the base of the Glenworth Valley on the NSW Central Coast. The site is surrounded by dry-sclerophyll eucalyptus forest and Popran Creek, a tidal brackish watercourse, intersects the Festival site. The Festival operates for 78 hours annually, from 9am on December 29 to 3pm on January 1 and accommodates over 10,000 camping or day customers and up to 1,500 artists, retail, security and volunteer staff.

Every year Peats Ridge strives to achieve new heights in sustainability and environmental outcomes. The 2010 Festival will feature exciting new initiatives as well as improvements on existing initiatives. One initiative we are very proud of is our WORLD FIRST in turning flushing toilet waste into compost.

The Festival has engaged Splashdown, Australia's most professional toilet supplier (and the company behind KENNY!), to provide all the toilet cubicles at the Festival. The Festival is also extremely excited to announce that they have found a way to turn the toilet waste from the flushing toilets into 100% compost. Peats Ridge will be the first event in the world to achieve this and they believe this process will open the door to a whole new level of sustainable outdoor toilet management in the event industry.

Combining the low flush toilet technology of Splashdown with the high-tech solutions of SITA and nature's own composting microbes, the solid toilet waste from this year's Festival will be processed locally and will end up as a high grade compost, available to be spread across garden beds throughout the region.

For more information on this and all the other sustainable initiatives the Festival has in place, please take the time to check out the details in their Model Event section - www.peatsridgefestival.com.au/sustainability.

Sustainability is not just an add-on to Peats Ridge; it is at the core of everything the Festival does.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION & TICKET SALES GO TO: www.peatsridgefestival.com.au