Environment

The Festival aims to improve and continue working on the following:

• Reduce reliance on generator use, to reduce HVO fuel consumption
• Increase public transport options and reduce the number of cars brought to the festival
• Continue to collaborate with local businesses and charities 
• Continue to look for a compost toilet company that fits with the Festival’s requirements, to reduce water and energy consumption
• Increase public awareness of risks to the environment and how tour audience can help and make a real impact on this

Cambridge Folk Festival are delighted to announce that it has achieved the Greener Festival Outstanding Certification 2023!

“Outstanding” signifies a truly outstanding and inspirational event. These are exceptional events who have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions, have excellent travel, transport, food and waste management programmes, protect the environment and minimise water use and communicate this to the public.

‘The Cambridge Folk Festival has worked steadily through the aspects of their carbon footprint on the local community and wider world over recent years. They make continual efforts year upon year to implement plans to reduce their impact, hand in hand with providing a great festival experience!’- AGF

Cambridge Folk Festival have been shortlisted for the following AGF International awards categories:

• International greener festival award
• Circular event award
• Community action award  
• Greener power award
• Water and sanitation award

Traders

1. Gillian Smellie - beautiful business ethos centred around wildlife. Natural prints with organic fabric. Calculates carbon footprint and accounts for 10% of sales to go to CIC woodland protection. Support a local sewing initiative for women.

Caterers

1. Diamond Dogs - brilliant upcycled van was just the start. They calculate and offset their carbon footprint with tree planting. The meat for the hot dogs is also sourced from local butchers. 

Did you know audience travel accounts for over 80% of our carbon footprint? We want you all here and to have a good time as it wouldn’t work without you!

How can we reduce it?

• Coaches National Express offer cheap tickets from all over the UK. www.nationalexpress.com/en
• Car Share Less cars = less carbon, pollution, congestion, noise and local impacts. We partner with GoCarShare and LiftShare so sign up now if you’ve got space in your car or want to find a lift. You can save money and have a great conscience.
• Keep it Healthy If you’re local then cycle or walk! We have cycle racks opposite the main gate.
• Carbon Balance. Balance your travel emissions through investing in renewable energy with the charity ecolibrium.

Please help us by filling out your transport details in the after-event questionnaire to help us track the emissions better and consider further ways in which we can reduce it.

The Festival has long recognised that our audience are appreciative to the concept of repair and are keen to get onboard with sustainable initiatives and practices. 2024 saw the Festival (CFF) pilot a Community Repair Corner (CRC) in partnership with Frank Schoofs and Cambridge Carbon Footprint (CCF). 

The purpose of the implementing the repair corner was to address the following purposes: 

• Reduce waste at the festival
• To keep people’s stuff going for the weekend and raise awareness about ‘throwaway’ habits
• Make people more aware of (community) repair and sign post to community repair cafes and workshops held across the UK

The most common issues and repairs the team helped with were:

• A hole in an air bed
• A collapsed camping chair (with metal posts)
• The “shoulder” seams worn on a folding “seat” camping chair
• Various clothing tears or rips (also in bags or rucksacks, potentially needing zips)
• Glasses (sunglasses or prescription) that had fallen or been stepped on
• After having visited the Community Repair Corner on a particular day, some local visitors then returned the following day with an item from home to repair, e.g. radio, coffee grinder and astronomy binoculars. Several locals (including crew members) also inquired about bike repairs.
• The main consumables required for repairs over the course of the Festival were as follows:
• TUFF tape (for air bed repairs)
• M3 or M4 bolts and nuts, at least 30 mm long (for camping chairs)
• Tiny screws for glasses
• Nylon waterproof patches (1 used for a tent repair; part of one used for an umbrella repair)
• Wide tape for patching (sewing)
• Extra strong thread (sewing)
• String or metal wire for mechanical reinforcement
• Gorilla tape
• Superglue
• Flexible glue (Stormsure) for shoes

We couldn’t have operated the Community Repair Corner without the project management of Frank and CCF along with the team of 9 voluntary repairers, 6 of which were local to Cambridge! One of which who even cycled with it in their trolley for 8 miles to safely transport it to the Festival.

The team noted that ‘there was no particular pattern to the repairs, apart from perhaps a lunchtime “lull”’.

In total the team helped 133 people with a repair, 33 of which were local to Cambridge. In addition to our UK-based visitors to the Festival, we also managed to help international visitors from Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, USA, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

The team of volunteers had many conversations as to whether the CRC concept would work at other festivals. While e.g. Glastonbury equally has a massive waste problem, would the audience take their stuff to a CRC, if it was available?

• Visitors, from Cambridge and beyond, were very keen to find out where their nearest Repair Café was.
• Some also inquired about volunteering for a Repair Café (mainly Cambridge-based, but also some further afield) and a few about starting their local Repair Café (e.g. in Norfolk)!
• Some also inquired about volunteering for a Repair Café (mainly Cambridge-based, but also some further afield) and a few about starting their local Repair Café (e.g. in Norfolk)
• Team highlights included, in no particular order:
• A request whether “we could do anything” about Fantastic Negrito’s outfit with ripped under arm seams 45 minutes before his stage appearance (they did!)
• A mobility scooter with a loose wire that took us some time to find the issue – but they got it going!
• An inflatable bunny suit had a tear
• Mitsune’s drummer needing a bolt and nut for his stand, that two of the volunteers had to improvise (last repair of the CRC)
• Being able to repair 36 out of 37 camping chairs brought in

Located in East Anglia, Cambridge, the Folk festival has a unique benefit as we share the event site with beautiful habitats and amazing wildlife! Some of which include the internationally rare chalk streams. As well as chalk grasslands which host important wildflowers and butterfly species. The tree trail in Cherry Hinton Hall, and the wildflower meadows

Our 2023 competition winner for the iNaturalist challenge was awarded to Paul Whitmarsh, submitting over 60 observations during the course of the Festival.

Check it out: Biodiversity of Cambridge folk festival! · iNaturalist