Last year I was asked by the Eco Action Partnership to carbon footprint the Isle of Wight Festival. Being a local and working in the green tourism industry, the gauntlet was thrown and I took up the challenge.

Normally calculating a carbon footprint is relatively easy – find out what the energy consumption is and convert to CO2 output (or its equivalent), but what about something as big and complicated as the Isle of Wight Festival?

Starting with the obvious, ticket holder travel would be a biggie. Information was gathered by some willing students from the local high school. They asked for home postcodes, how punters got to the island , how many were in cars (if that was their mode of transport) and if they were staying on site. As well as road / rail travel, the ferries had to be looked at too; there’s a big difference between faster foot passenger ferries and car ferries. And, to add extra complication, travel on the mainland was not necessarily reflected on their island travel i.e. train users would have got a bus or taxi once they had travelled across the Solent.

With generators of all sizes, right from the single security lighting units on the camp site right up to the bus-sized generators back stage, energy consumption was done the easiest way, by asking the bloke who delivered the fuel to them all!

Figures for waste, sewerage and a few other bits and bobs were also recorded , and just when I thought I had managed to get my head around it all, the Red Arrows flew over – Damn! (I got their carbon footprint by the way, 17 tonnes per display in case you were wondering!).

So ... did the Isle of Wight Festival have a big carbon footprint? Hell, yeah! With 55 000 attendees and many thousands of staff, what would you expect? But broken down, the carbon footprint for each person is barely that over the normal ‘average’ three days spent at home and work.

Lois Prior

Key Environmental Developments (Isle of Wight)