Peats Ridge features 10 stages filled to the brim with amazing music, arts performance and exhibitions, a focus on sustainable practices and education, a dedicated children’s festival, workshops, markets and much more. It’s a family friendly festival, known for its intimate vibe, and last year’s festival saw over 10,000 happy eco music fans attend the event. With a stellar line up, the ten stages were alive with energy and excitement, for all three days.
But this festival not just about having a good time with your friends and family – although that is primarily what it wants to be remembered for at the end of the three days – it’s also all about the environment and this year they have announced quite a coup:
COMPOSTING FLUSHING TOILETS – A WORLD FIRST!
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. They are also extremely excited to announce that they have found a way to turn the toilet waste from the flushing toilets into 100% compost. This means 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.
Credit: Palwesha Yusaf
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.
Now when you started reading this article you didn’t think we’d be talking about toilets and microbes did you? But it just goes to show that you can have fun and be good for the environment at the same time!
While many events are just starting to green their processes, Peats Ridge has been benchmarking best practice standards since 2004. In fact Peats Ridge is also a recognised global leader in running sustainable events and has been a launching pad for the sustainable event industry worldwide.
United Nations Music & Environment Initiative Founding Partner
As a measure of their expertise in this area Peats Ridge, earlier this year (2010), became the only organisation in the Southern Hemisphere to be 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.
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.
Want to see all this sustainability in action yourself – well, you can!!
Peats Ridge and Green Times are offering a double pass to one lucky person – check out the competition but don’t dally as it closes at 3pm on 9 December 2010 – and like they say, you’ve got to be in it to win it! COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED
However, if you want some certainty on your tickets – then get in quick, there are still a few left, but they’re selling extremely fast!
Go to www.peatsridgefestival.com.au/tickets now!
Sustainable Industry:
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 Change’s: 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.
Festival Fast Facts:
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.
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.
For further information on the festival please go to: www.peatsridgefestival.com.au.
To find out more about the United Nations Music & Environment Initiative go to:
www.unep.org/music_env/about and www.unep.org/music_env/participants
