Junction 2 recognises that we are facing a climate and ecological emergency in which we all share responsibility, from event promoters and artists, to the music industry at large and all those who dance with us.
This year, we want to renew our pledge to lead in our community, communicate truthfully and transparently, and to hold ourselves, our audience and collaborators to account. We are striving for net zero carbon emissions at Junction 2 Festival by 2024, and will push beyond this, going carbon negative by 2025; using our creativity, privilege and power to contribute to global and local projects that preserve the natural environment for future generations, and to give back to communities on the front line of climate impacts.
Our Principles
Junction 2 aims to leave a better world by...
1. Taking responsibility for tomorrow:
That means understanding our climate impacts, negative and positive, and doing something about it.
2. Telling it how it is:
We will be ambitious, remain transparent and base our actions on science. We will tell it how it is every step of the way, reporting annually.
3. Using our voice:
The environment and the global majority at the frontier of the climate crisis, will have leading roles in our festival every year from now on.
4. Going beyond:
We will go beyond net zero emissions, find ways to invest in the future, and be leading-edge in the dance music space in climate action.
5. Taking everyone with us.
We will communicate what we do and why, working with our audience, and everyone involved in Junction 2, to do great things together.
Where we’re at in 2023
As a live event, we recognise our key areas of environmental impact as follows:
- Travel emissions from suppliers and artist international travel
- Fuel for generators and vehicles on site
- Impacts resulting from the food and drink supply chain
- The use of materials and waste processing
We also recognise our potential positive impact with our community and audiences to inspire action beyond the festival.
We’re already on our way with sustainability measures. We have declared a climate emergency, almost phased out single-use plastic, and managed energy efficiently, but it’s time to go further.
Our new strategy sets ambitious targets, and a path to meeting them. We will take steps to be leading-edge in ‘taking responsibility for the future’ in the UK dance music scene.
The 2025 Strategy
Priority action areas:
- Overall carbon footprint – reducing our emissions, reporting openly and reaching beyond net zero by 2025
- Food sourcing – robust environmental standards
- Materials management – going circular and designing out waste
- Biodiversity - taking care of our festival site, and everything that lives there
- Communications – an open and inspiring conversation with everyone
Policies, plans and tools
This strategy sets out clear goals, principles and the steps we will take to reduce environmental impacts and inspire our community to take action.
We will create policy, plans and guides that will communicate standards and practices to all stakeholders with the aim that everyone understands the role they play:
- Sustainable Procurement Policy
- Annual Green Action Plan
- Measurement and reporting of emissions (using third party tools) Food & drink standards
- Waste Management Plan
- Brand Partner Policy
- Beyond Net zero
We will significantly reduce emissions, aiming for 90% (scope 1, 2 & 3), and responsibly balance the unavoidable. We will use third party carbon calculator tools and work with partners who can help us to measure following the globally recognised Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). Our team will be certified Carbon Literate by the Carbon Literacy Project in 2023. Our journey to beyond net zero will take 3 years:
- 2023 – collecting data on all of our impacts, assessing our footprint, (scopes 1 & 2) and putting in place a detailed net zero plan for scopes 1 - 3.
- 2024 – achieve net zero (scopes 1 & 2) and work with our community to reduce emissions (scope 3)
- 2025 – achieve beyond net zero: Account for all emissions (scopes 1-3) with our partners and go beyond with investments in climate, nature and people.
Supply chain management
We will put measures in place to maintain environmental standards and reduce impacts across the supply chain by:
- Sharing our mission, principles and targets with our artists, contractors, partners and audiences to inspire everyone to join our culture of responsibility and action.
- Establishing minimum standards for materials in our Procurement Policy
- Terms and Conditions - contractual obligations relating to our procurement policy and monitoring requirements.
- Establishing food standards
Communication
We pledge to lead in our community, communicate truthfully and transparently, and to hold ourselves, our audience and collaborators to account. We won’t always get it right, but we will stay sharp, keep learning, and do our best – ‘we give a shit’.
We will:
- Clearly communicate our goals
- Create a culture of positive action and knowledge sharing
- Provide experiences onsite to inspire change
- Work with brand partners who share our principles
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