Since day one, sustainability has been high on the agenda for Timber Festival – being born from a collaboration between two organisations; Wild Rumpus and The National Forest Company, who strive to bring positive change and leave as little impact on the world as they can.
We hope that these values have been evident – through how we operate and through the programme, All our environmental initiatives rely on buy in from you – the festival goer – as well as us.
So far you have embraced composting loos, no single use cups, and some of you have embraced low carbon travel: we really hope you will embrace this choice with us too – and for three days we really hope you won’t miss it!
By going meat and fish free at the festival, we hope to:
- Achieve a reduction in Timber Festival’s overall food related emissions.
- Inspire people to reduce their meat / fish intake in their daily lives.
- We’re also are hoping that, in the future, we will be able to compost our food waste on site. Not having meat / fish waste in here will make it easier for us to do so.
Timber’s Sustainable Goals:
1. Inspiring Nature Connection – to increase pro environmental behaviours.
2. Developing local green economies and supply chains.
3. Working towards full circularity / closed loop systems.
4. Measuring and Reducing all possible emissions to a minimum co2e.
5. Inspiring positive behaviour change, beyond the festival.
These goals are underpinned by the UNs Sustainable Development Goals.
Will not eating meat at a festival really make that much difference?
Yes!
The decision to go meat and fish free has been something of much lengthy debate within the team and has been on the agenda for the last four years. We have been careful to weigh up all factors before jumping to a decision: some of these factors being – scientific evidence (One Planet Plate), our values, public appetite, and industry best practice (Green Event Code).
Being what feels like a very personal decision to many – what we choose to put into our bodies three or more times a day – we are aware that this is a nuanced debate and one that provokes fiery opinion!
For the last two years our crew catering has been serving meat and fish free food to our staff – which has not been without much debate too! However, as with many of our other initiatives we run across site (either audience facing or operational), they are all in the name of emissions reductions, causing the least pollution or using as few of our planet’s finite resources as possible.
What we know is that the consumption of meat causes land degradation, deforestation, water pollution, is resource intensive and inefficient, as well as emitting GHGs. Typically, a western vegetarian diet produces around half of the co2 equivalent per day as a western meat-based diet.
Therefore, as a crude mechanism to reduce emissions, going meat free is a no brainer for us.
We are aware that it’s not so black and white when it comes to lower or higher emitter foods, and there are some vegetarian foods that don’t have great credentials either.
Ultimately, we would like to be measuring and climate impact labelling all the food that we serve – giving people the choice about how they spend their ‘personal carbon budget’. This tool exists, but amidst the current economic climate, this is something we can’t currently absorb the cost of as a festival, nor could we push onto our traders. But this is what we are working towards in the future.
We’d recommend the book ‘How bad is a banana’ by Mike Berners Lee if you want to learn more about the emissions of specific foods.
We advocate for eating seasonally, locally and varied with few high GHG emitting foods – any mono crop or monoculture is detrimental for balanced ecosystems, healthy soil, and biodiversity
Ethical Standards
We also ask our traders to align with other ethical food standards and certifications beyond just being meat/dairy free. We set out preferred/recommended certification for all traders coming to Timber and we always trying to add to our recommended supplier list.
Inclusivity
We will still have a wide range of food on offer to cater for different dietary requirements – there will be lots of gluten free/dairy free options as well as a variety of cuisines to try.
You’re still able to bring meat and fish with you into the campsites, or you have allergies/ reasons why you need to do so. But we do hope you try some of our delicious meat free meals on offer from our lovely traders.
