Sustainability plan

As a responsible festival, Light Night Leeds is committed to reducing the environmental impact of our event whilst using our platform to educate and influence others.

Year on year we will take positive steps to improve our ecological footprint by:

reducing reliance on fossil fuels
reducing waste and exploring reusable options
working with audiences, suppliers, and artists to positively influence travel choices and reduce travel-related emissions
measuring and reporting key impacts to measure progress
speaking out to audiences and stakeholders and using our creative voices to contribute to the public narrative about positive change

We have been gathering data to act as a benchmark across all our festivals since 2018, taking into account everything from the power the festival uses to how audiences travel to and from the event. Having completed these, we are now in a position to start implementing initiatives to reduce our impact.

The key areas we are working on:

Energy consumption

Introduce energy monitoring in our contract agreements with power suppliers
Use mains grid power for installations in the first instance
Where necessary use Green D generators

Sustainable art

Reduce transport emissions of large international pieces of artwork by working with Light Up The North partners to jointly present a UK festival tour
Work with partners such as Blue Dot Festival to co-commission work made in the UK

Food vendors

Request an Environmental Policy from food vendors booked by ourselves
Ask vendors to remove single use plastic items, serve food in compostable food containers and provide recyclable cutlery
Give priority to vendors from the local area to reduce travel
Offer 50% of the catering to vegetarian and vegan food vendors

Travel

Work with local suppliers wherever possible
Measure artist and team travel to benchmark against 2019
Promote park and ride as best option to travel to and from the festival
Encourage festival attendees to offset their car travel or donate to the Leeds Woodland Creation Scheme (Love Leeds Parks – Light Night Tree Planting Fund)external link and purchase a tree

Positively engage and influence

Request a statement from artists and suppliers about how they work with a Green focus
Social media opportunity event to announce figures raised for the Woodland Creation Scheme and a tree planting event with core team and volunteers in autumn

Promotional material

Identify water refill stations in Leeds and promote online by encouraging people to download the ReFill app
Introduce a mobile friendly website and reduce the number of programmes printed
Identify signage boards that can be reused with a vinyl/other reapplication
Print using FSC accredited paper
Replace one use festival banners with a recyclable alternative
Continue to work with local and national organsiations to ensure our website remains accessible to everyone

Production

Source resources/services locally
Work smarter with production teams, completing a number of jobs in one location at once rather making multiple journeys to multiple locations
Reusable accreditation pockets