Coventry City Council’s Godiva Festival has achieved the Greener Festival Improvers Award 2023 after several sustainability improvements were implemented by organisers.
The award which relates to last year’s festival was achieved following a rigorous assessment process by not-for-profit sustainability specialists, A Greener Future.
The assessment involves a detailed analysis of areas of sustainability such as transport, energy and power, waste, water usage, local environment, carbon emissions and food and beverages.
Councillor Abdul Salam Khan, Deputy Leader of Coventry City Council and Cabinet Member for Events, said: “I’m delighted to hear that Godiva Festival has been awarded a sustainability certification – it’s an important milestone on our journey.”
“Not only have festival organisers focused on areas such as energy, power and water use, festival attendees played a huge part in this achievement.
“I’d like to thank our attendees for utilising our recycling points, bringing reusable water bottles to refill at our water points and for travelling to and from the festival sustainably.”
Sustainability specialists from A Greener Future attended last year’s event which was held in War Memorial Park to assess the festival in action.
Charlie Forbes from A Greener Future explains the reason Godiva Festival secured award: “The Improvers Certification that has been awarded signifies that the festival has made great strides on the green event journey, with continued improvements, and shows that it exhibits a significant engagement with the process of reducing negative environmental impacts and enhancing positive impacts.
“Assessors were impressed by the amount of thought the organisers had given to sustainability across the site, and how they had tried to involve everyone in the process. This was particularly impressive with waste disposal and organisation.”
Councillor Jim O’Boyle, Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, says putting an even bigger focus on sustainability is a priority for this year’s event:
“For Godiva Festival 2024 we will be putting in even more work to boost sustainability and we’ll be working with all areas including food vendors and event partners to achieve this.
“Festivals and large-scale events use a huge amount of power, so we’ll be increasing our use of hybrid generators and introducing solar power lighting across the site.
“We’ll also be working closely with our food and beverage vendors to ensure there is minimal waste and we will again have our recycling zones for any waste to be recycled or composted.
“We used cargo bikes last year to transport materials and exhibitions to site and we will be doing even more this year to encourage people who are attending the event as a visitor, participant or contractor to travel sustainably.”
Founders of the world's first sustainability standard for festivals and events in 2007, the A Greener Festival Framework has been used to guide, assess and certify hundreds of events, festivals and venues worldwide; providing independent audit and external verification.
This year’s Godiva Festival is taking place from Friday 5 July – Sunday 7 July. Tickets are due to go on sale in March and the event line-up will be announced ahead of the ticket on sale date.
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