GREEN BELLA CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED!

Today as we celebrate World Earth Day we thought this is the perfect time to tell you about our GREEN BELLA pledge.

Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival is located within the grounds of the beautiful Belladrum Estate which is home to people, farm animals, local wildlife, insects, flowers, crops and much more. Over the years we have been constantly thinking about how we can reduce our toll on the estate as we approach planning, running and derig of the festival. We want to protect the environment to make sure is stays the perfect home for all it inhabits while reducing our impact on the planet. We have been working hard behind the scenes so now is the time to tell you what we have been up to! We hope this inspires our wonderful Bella family to join us in our GREEN BELLA campaign.

GREEN BELLA: We promise to leave as little an impact on Belladrum Estate and the surrounding environment as we can.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE?
We are aware that public recycling at events doesn’t work efficiently. The second the wrong piece of litter goes into a recycling bin the whole thing is contaminated and cannot be recycled. So, efforts to keep doing this are pointless. We know that recycling at our event isn’t enough and won’t have a big enough impact on our waste footprint.
So, over the years we have worked with our friends Pat Munros and have achieved zero waste to landfill. We took the waste from the festival, picked out and recycled what we could and the rest was used for waste to energy. Waste to energy is process of generating energy in the form of electricity and or heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. However, now because so many people are using waste to energy there are issues surrounding excess product. If we keep doing this, then it’s likely that our waste won’t be converted into energy and so we are back to square one with waste ending up in landfill.
As it stands the festival produces 100 tonnes of waste and our goal is to reduce this every single year. See below for all the ways we will be reaching our goal and how you can help!

GREEN GOBLET CUPS
In one weekend at Belladrum you thirsty bunch drink your way through 90,000 plastic cups! Now, going forward we will not be sending any plastic cups to landfill because we are introducing single use cups.We are delighted to introduce to the festival this year Green Goblet -reusable, recyclable cups.All of our bars on site will be operating this scheme. £1 will be added to your first drink and you will receive your cup. When you go to buy your next drink you exchange your cup for a clean one or if you want to keep your cup you pay £1 again for another cup.

TRAVEL
Car exhaust fumes are still one of the greatest contributors to global climate change. To help reduce our carbon footprint we want to encourage our Bella family to use public transport or car share when traveling to the festival as much as possible.
CAR SHARE
Join forces with family and friends to make sure all seats are full in cars traveling to the festival. Sign up to liftshare.com to offer available seats in your car or to join a group already traveling to the event.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Please use buses and trains to travel to the festival if you can.
Our official transport partner Tuned in Travel has so much to offer, running coaches from all major towns in Scotland. Book your tickets here
Our local bus company D&E coaches will be running regular shuttles from Inverness bus station to the festival and vice versa. Check out bus times and book here
ARTIST TRANSPORT
Our transport partners Scottish Vauxhall help us shuttle artists to the festival and around the site. We are so excited to tell you that this year they are bringing an electric car on site for artist transport. Hopefully the first of many

CLEAN FIELDS
We introduced clean fields to the festival in 2017 and it has been a resounding success. Our ethos behind this is that festival goers keep their campsite clean and it has a friendly, neighbourly atmosphere. Thank you, wonderful Clean Fields campers for always opting into the agreement to keep this campsite spotless. Check out the post event pictures from 2019 of Clean Fields camping versus the other camping areas above. It breaks our wee Bella hearts each year seeing the aftermath of these areas. We have to get better, we have to clean up after ourselves.
3000 of you have signed up to spend the weekend camping in Clean Fields this year. Could you imagine if the whole festival could look like this? Our vision for Bella is that the entire site is left like this. This is a huge task that we simply cannot manage without our Bella family. We all have a duty to make sure the estate is looked after. So please all do your bit when you leave:

Take all your camping equipment home
Remove tent pegs from the ground
Clear up and dispose of all rubbish in the bins provided
Don’t over pack, take only what you need for the festival

WASTE
There are areas within the festival that we can recycle in a controlled environment, and this does work. So, for instance from our bars, crew catering, food traders etc we can sort through and allocate to relevant containers. We also ask all traders to use compostable containers.
CAMPING EQUIPMENT
Just like reducing single use plastic by introducing Green Goblet Cups we urge you all to not use single use camping equipment. Please don’t buy a tent, roll mat, sleeping bag just for Belladrum. This year could you borrow from a friend or go to a charity shop instead?
Over the years we have developed a great relationship with Highlands Support Refugees (HSR). We have been trying to make good with the mountain of tents and camping equipment left behind, so HSR scoop up everything once you are all gone and reuse for refugees. This is a huge task as items need to be picked up, checked, and packed away. This is an okay solution, but we think we are making it too easy for people to leave equipment behind.
This year Highlands Support Refugees will have a station where you can drop off equipment rather than them collecting once everyone has left. So again, we ask everyone to pack up their gear and clean up behind them.
WATER
Bring refillable water bottles with you and top up throughout the festival rather than buying bottles water. We will have plenty of refillable stations on site.

CUBE MODULAR
This year we are using Cube Modular as our backstage cabins rather than portacabins. Cube Modular use an innovative foldable design technology making the containers the most mobile and environmentally friendly solution in the modular building industry.Due to the containers foldable nature, logistical costs and carbon emissions can be substantially reduced. For example, a total of five units can be stacked upon each other, offering an 80% reduction in storage and transportation costs in comparison to fixed frame containers.Comparison between using foldable cabins to traditional fixed frame cabins:
Total number of trucks required: 3
Total number of trucks required using fixed frame cabins: 15
Emissions cut:22.76 tonnes

We promise to do everything we can to reduce our impact on Belladrum estate and the surrounding environment as much as we can and we hope that you will join us in our promise.

Love
Team Bella x

GREEN BELLA CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED!

GREEN BELLA CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED!

Today as we celebrate World Earth Day we thought this is the perfect time to tell you about our GREEN BELLA pledge.

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