onboard:earth’s live event industry members celebrated raising £740,000 for environmental restoration and community renewable energy projects at the charity’s annual gathering in Bristol on 4 Feb 2025.
Since the charity was founded by Boomtown, Shambala and Kendal Calling in 2015 it has promoted the reduction of travel carbon impacts at festivals and events and raised funds for diligently selected environmental restoration projects. At the event, onboard:earth’s CEO Chris Johnson announced a new target of raising £1 million by 2026, launched new tools to support progress on measuring and reducing event-related travel impacts, and celebrated the charity winning the LIVE Green Award in 2024.
Director of Boomtown and founding member of onboard.earth, Chris Rutherford, commented: “It’s amazing to see how individual donations from audiences and events across the live events industry can come together to create something so hugely beneficial for people and the planet. onboard:earth is a testament to the power of the live events industry to inspire people to take climate action and create positive impacts in the UK and across the world.”
At the gathering event members heard that in 2024, over £100,000 was raised bringing total donations to £740,000 since the charity was founded. Last year members such as Junction 2 Festival, Boomtown, 2000trees, End of The Road, Green Man, Greenbelt, Kendal Calling, Ourea Events, Shambala Festival, Threshold Sports and Big Green Coach all worked with onboard:earth to raise funds. Donations from 2024 will support four environmental projects, all of which meet the charity’s aims of climate justice, restoring and preserving ecosystems and benefitting communities in the UK and in parts of the world already suffering the worst effects of climate change.
Guests enjoyed an insightful presentation by Vicky Wallace, Fundraising Manager of Rainforest Trust, detailing the positive impacts that donations have already made for threatened rainforests across the world. This was followed by Danny Newby, Founding Director of Big Green Coach explaining how coach initiatives and ticketing strategies give festival organisers opportunities to get more visitors out of cars and using low-carbon transport to visit events.
Wallace said: “We cannot stop climate change without saving tropical forests. Rainforest Trust UK is proud to work with onboard:earth to permanently safeguard intact forests that sustain people and threatened species, and lock up billions of tonnes of carbon to alleviate climate disruption.”
To support events professionals, artists and crew to measure travel carbon on the move, onboard:earth has launched a free-to-download app, which allows users to log and download travel data, model low-carbon travel routes and fund environmental restoration per journey or on a subscription basis. A newly developed offline tool allows onboard:earth members to record and measure their scopes 1, 2 and 3 travel emissions to establish benchmarks, set reduction targets, and monitor progress.
Festival organisers, event companies, artists and crew can be part of the plan to raise £1 million for environmental restoration by contacting hello@onboard.earth or visiting
www.onboard.earth
