We did not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow her from our children.
Medicine Festival is guided by regenerative principles – we aim to work in harmony with the land to look toward a regenerative future, and to educate all on how we can live with a smaller environmental footprint on earth. We’re committed to convening beautiful souls on the journey towards a more beautiful, equitable and thriving world.
Impacts
However, we recognise that festivals have several inevitable areas of impact:
Energy consumption related to producing and running the event
Travel of attendees: audience, crew, artists and contractors
Food supply chain, sourcing and preparing
Use of raw materials for build
Management of waste
Ambition
This year, our main focus is:
📊 To measure and monitor all of our impacts: Energy, Travel, Food & Beverage, Traders, Equipment, Decor and Waste
📉 We aim to produce an aligned, post-event environmental report annually, so you can join us on the journey.
Targets
We’ll be setting ambitious targets to challenge ourselves to bring the more beautiful world our hearts now is possible into every corner of our production. Read on for more information.
♻️ Energy consumption
This year, our main aim is to measure everything even more acutely. We are working with an excellent new energy provider, and looking toward future plans with Wasing Estate to use more grid energy with renewable green tariffs, whilst learning about smart grids. The generators we are using are partially powered by hydrogenated vegetable fuel (HVO) – a type of renewable fuel produced by hydro-treating vegetable oils, such as rapeseed.
We have also got a fleet of electric crew buggies on site this year!
Energy Commitment:
We’re aiming to reduce our energy footprint by 25% by 2024.
♻️ Travel
We’re going to be carefully mapping audience, crew and artist travel data. So keep an eye out for surveys to help us on social media or in the fields at Medicine! We have new coach shuttles travelling from Bristol and London, shuttles from local stations and are launching a new cycle scheme this year.
If you are driving, please do try to Liftshare where possible, either offering or requesting a life to fill up cars to reduce emissions. We’re introducing a carbon calculator to our ticket platform to help folks pay a small fee towards tree planting and green projects to offset their specific travel.
Travel commitment:
We’ll then aim to reduce transport-related emissions by 15% by the following year.
♻️ Food
Our crew food is already rather rigorously local, organic, whole food and sought from cooperative wholesalers, mostly! Our food traders are all beautifully intentional too. But this year, we’re planning to capture the metrics of our food impact through surveys, measuring and monitoring, and report on this to encourage all our procurement and trader. We’re also aiming to collect and work with food leftovers to make compost and create a circular loop.
Food commitment:
We’d love to work towards 80% of food sourced locally by 2025.
♻️ Build materials
We’re blessed that much of our awesome infrastructure is permanently built into the land. And much of the decor we use is sought from local, vintage, charitable sources. But this year, we’re aiming to get more granular by monitoring down to each screw!
Materials commitment:
We’re working towards a circular system, where everything is returned or reused.
♻️ Waste
Waste is an inevitable part of life, but it is not all equal. We’ve already banned single-use plastics, and ensure food traders use only certified compostable materials. We’re working with new partners to go deeper. We’ll be bringing recycling and separation into the arenas this year, and working with Wasing and the local area to absorb the food waste we produce. Please help us by rigorously separating different types of waste, putting them in the correct bins, and following careful guidelines.
Waste commitment:
We’re aiming to achieve 50% recycling rates this coming year and to work with food waste as a compost source for the land or local organsiations.
♻️ Partnerships
We’re busy finding the best, most conscious and committed partners to support us in becoming a more equitable, and environmentally friendly festival. This year we’re organising more eco-energy, offsetting our emissions with Ecolibrium, bringing easy, communal travel options with Tuned in Travel and Liftshare, and balancing out loo queues with Peequal.
♻️ Programme magic
We have always sought to provide the most stimulating programme of sustainable, regenerative, and expansive activities. We’ve focused hard on creating spaces and providing workshops and sessions to help us all on the journey to a more socially, environmentally and spiritually equitable future. This year we have three new spaces focused solely on social and ecological justice, to help inspire you to live in deeper harmony with all beings.
What can you do?
It will take all of us attentive and engaged, welcoming deeper understanding and awareness to create an equitable, thriving future for all beings on earth. So there are a few, small actions you can take to help us this year:
Travel to Medicine mindfully.
Travel on the bus, train, or even cycle! Or if you are travelling by car, please aim to fill spare seats when possible, to reduce the impact!
Find out more here.
Bring your own eco-inventory!
Bring mugs for coffee, bottles for water, plus lunchboxes and cutlery. We will be selling beautiful mugs and large thermos bottles.
Use the recycling points carefully and separate food waste.
This year we’re increasing ambition on our recycling statistics. Contaminating waste streams in the bins make it hard for waste folks to separate and successfully recycle.
Be mindful of water usage and take quick showers.
Splish and splosh with the joyful rapidity of a song bird in a pond, and shorten your showers to save water.