Staging a Sustainable Event

Client

Live Nation concert promoters and organisers

Event

Live Earth concert 2007 at Wembley Stadium

Requirements

Live Nation is one of the world’s largest concert promoters and organizers. As producer for the London leg of Live Earth – a global concert to raise awareness of climate change – Live Nation were asked to virtually implement BS 8901, BSI British Standards’ specification for a sustainable event management system.

Event Solution

By using Wembley Stadium as a venue, Live Nation had the benefit of a brand new sustainably-designed venue. The stadium sources its electricity from a green energy supplier and its lighting control systems enable it to reduce overall energy consumption.

The venue also has sophisticated waste management in place, ensuring that waste levels can be monitored and that card, paper, glass, wood, metal and electrical items are all recycled.

Industry wide, waste management is a particularly significant issue. A large outdoor concert would typically generate 400 to 500 tons of waste which would go direct to landfill.

Once you’ve got a grasp of working sustainably, it’s not that difficult. It’s not something that’s going to cost a huge amount of money. It’s not something that’s going to take a huge amount of time.

- Andy Pearson, Production Manager, Live Nation

In response, Live Nation introduced a deposit scheme to incentivise concertgoers to return plastic cups and bottles to a collection area. As well as being sustainable this also saved money, since the cost of collection skips and deposits was offset by the savings on landfill taxes.

In addition, the event caterers used food boxes made from sustainably sourced sugar cane and reed fibre. Fair Trade hot drinks were prepared using green production methods and bottled water was sold in bio plastic bottles, with profits going to fund water aid projects in Africa.

Another key element of Live Nation’s objectives was to minimize the energy impact of staging the concert itself. To do this it tried to use as much of the green house power as possible.

However, for the concert’s lighting and PA system to run videos and to broadcast the event, the power requirement was far greater than that available at the stadium. Therefore, every effort was made to use biofuels in extra generators that were brought on site.

Similarly, efforts were made to ensure that biofuels were used as much as possible to power forklifts, cranes and cherry pickers.

Live Nation also ensured that construction materials such as plywood were sourced from sustainable sources.

Outcomes

Live Nation recognized that event attendees are increasingly driving the sustainability agenda through their personal choices. At the same time, many major artists and event hosts are keen to be linked to the sustainability agenda and to work with environmentally sensitive organizations. The result points to clients increasingly looking for event organizers who are able to demonstrate sustainability credentials.

Andy Pearson, Live Nation’s Production Manager highlights the fact that successful sustainable implementation cannot be planned too early where suppliers are involved.

“It is something we can tie in to the initial contract stage. We can say, ‘Can you give us a quote based on this site plan which takes into account our sustainability requirements and our minimum standards?’ At this point, I think it’s important to speak to contractors and ask, ‘How much can you do?’, and then build on that.”