When it comes to sustainability, Global Goals Week is a great chance to reflect on ‘action’ as well as ‘awareness’ and ‘accountability’. Here, Architect Rebecca Brown unpicks an example of positive action from the live music industry and explores how some of the key sustainability moves behind it could be applied to the construction sector.
For two slightly damp Sundays in a row I made the short train journey up to Clifton Down to experience one of my biggest pleasures in life – live music. Despite the weather, there was an additional reason to feel good other than entertainment provided by Massive Attack, Lankum, Jessie Ware and LCD Soundsystem (as well as several interesting installations and talks) – this was part of a wider experiment on the future of sustainable live music.
Act 1.5 (referencing the Paris Agreement target of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees) hosted by Massive Attack was an event designed to achieve the lowest carbon footprint for an event of its scale so far. Beyond the new norms of more sustainable packaging and recycling bins, this event teamed up with researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (and in partnership with my own alma mater the University of Manchester, among others) to discover how we can make changes to the way we experience live music without harming the planet. Their research summarises key findings and recommendations for how to achieve this using what they have learnt through Massive Attack’s tour (a summary of which you can find here).
Some of the key moves behind the event were:
- A localised presale period to deter private car travel. Anyone living within Bristol, Bath and the surrounding Gloucestershire, Swindon and Taunton area postcodes was able to access the local pre-sale which went live on Wednesday 6th December)
- An entire event site powered entirely by 100% renewable energy
- A rail travel incentive initiative to generate a vital drawdown of audience travel emissions (where up to 80% of emissions for major live music events are generated)
- A meat-free arena
- Free post-show electric shuttles to main rail hubs
- 100% zero to landfill waste removal
- As a show legacy, the creation of a new, climate resilient woodland plantation in the South West region, consisting of mountain, shining and southern blue gum trees (chosen for their fast growth and efficient carbon capture qualities) in partnership with Train Hugger and The Royal Forestry Society
- All touring & production vehicles electric or fuelled by verified 100% waste product HVO fuel.
In addition to this, when I then attended Forwards Festival the following week, it was great to see that the stages, composting toilets, and much of the other infrastructure from the previous week had been retained and reused for this event as well.
Upon reflecting on two amazing weekends’ worth of music and entertainment, it got my brain going on how much of this could actually be applicable to construction and what we could all be doing to make these projects more sustainable.
Here are some of my thoughts on what we could take from this in construction:
- Hiring from local areas where possible to reduce the need to travel (this could be for both consultants and on-site staff)
- Moving towards powering sites from renewable energy (e.g. electric battery generators rather than diesel and electric on-site vehicles)
- Re-using existing structures in situ rather than removal and replacement
- Incentivising site visitors and staff to use shared or public transport
- Reducing materials sent to landfill
- Maybe we could even see compostable toilets and vegan food options on sites?!
To draw a parallel between music and construction, we could say – as architects – we write and create the ‘songs’ which the contractors then ‘play’. This is why, on a built environment project, it’s vital that sustainability starts at the song-writing stage and that all members of the ‘band’ are playing in tune.
