Environmental Charter - Haslemere Fringe Festival

Haslemere Fringe Festival Environmental Charter

Since 2010, the Haslemere Fringe Festival has offered arts, music, comedy and poetry to our local community in one-off sessions and our Fringe Festival. We’re determined to make sure we’re here in years to come too. We believe our responsibility as a festival provider must include a response to climate change and we want to play our part in supporting the world’s mission to limit global warming to 1.5C.

Haslemere Fringe Festival focusses on sustainability and doing everything we can to bring entertainment with a minimum environmental impact.

Waste

We will make it easy to recycle on site and send less than 2% of our waste to landfill.

We are partnering with Chambers Waste Management and all our Festival waste goes back to their Material Recovery Facility in Guildford where everything is completely segregated.

All recyclable material (such as glass and hard plastics etc) is recycled, all food waste is sent to a BioGen facility (to generate power), everything else that can be, is turned into Refuse Derived Fuel to be used in power stations, so less than 2% of all our 2022 waste will end up in landfill.

Locally we partner with Love Haslemere Hate Waste & Transition Haslemere working to help promote Reducing, Recycling & Reusing throughout the festival site.

We’re working towards:

Eliminating single use plastics
Reducing, Reusing and Recycling
Only using plastic-free glitter
Educating our community

Power

Set a program of finding more sustainable energy solutions. New in 2024 – this includes the use of hybrid battery generators that will allow us to only run off diesel when necessary.

Suppliers

Work with all our suppliers, stallholders & artists to:

Reduce CO2 emissions
Bring their own reusable / biodegradable containers & cutlery for food & drink
No single use straws on site.
Where possible, use more sustainable products e.g. Fair Trade.

Transport

We partner with South Western Railway who offer direct travel to Haslemere from anywhere along the London to Portsmouth line. Our festival is just a 10min walk from the station or you can always get a number 19, 70 or 71 bus.

We also promote car sharing & cycling and this year, we will provide bike racks.

Noise

We measure our noise levels regularly to ensure they are within accessible levels and close the site at 11.00pm to keep noise to a minimum.

Local

We work with local green initiatives including Love Haslemere Hate Waste, Transition Haslemere, Local town Council & others.

We can’t do this without you! Here’s some ideas to support our mission:

Waste:

Share common bags with your neighbours; rubbish is always a good way of breaking the ice!
Leave your packaging in your recycling bins at home.
Take home any items which can’t be recycled – it can take up to 100 years for a crisp packet disintegrate!
We are now all aware of the damage micro-plastics do to the environment and the oceans so we would encourage all festival goers not to bring any plastic straws or glitter with plastic in it on site.

Transport – Please use public transport when possible – car share – cycle – and of course walk if you are local.

Cigarettes – Butts and filters do not biodegrade and their fibres can take 10-15 years to break down. Please consider using cigarette pouches, rather than dropping them! They all have to be picked up so please do your best to help us out.

Water – Please bring your own reusable bottles for filling at our free water station.

Keeping it Local – As a community festival we love working with our local businesses – do what you can to support them too!

July 5-7

2024