My google alerts, um, alerted me to these two news stories about green festivals over in Paul McCartneyland. First up is a Smartplanet.com's roundup of British green festivals co-authored by our close personal friend Ben Challis, one of the founders of the Brit-centric website A Greener Festival. We keep talking to Ben about how we should collaborate more--maybe this will finally be the year it happens!

British festivals sound like they're pretty much like American festivals, with lots of the same bands and the same general demographic. The big differences from a green perspective are that they tend to be easier to get to by public transportation (by virtue of being in a country where everything is easier to get to by public transit) and that they are jumping on board the composting toilet bandwagon, while we here in the US are left to suffer with nasty blue chemical toilets.

Second up is a slightly more in-depth piece by the BBC (!!!) profiling the award that the T in the Park festival won for greening its event. That festival is also mentioned in the first article, but it's not clear to me whether it's the greenest of them all or just the best advertised. Anyway, nice to see the green festival buzz going all the way mainstream--a mention in the Beeb is a Very Big Deal, indeed. Congrats to the T in the Park!

Labels: EMA awards, Europe, festival, jason, T in the Park

European Parliament votes to require car ads include warnings on CO2 emissions-repost from Grist

The European Parliament recently voted that car ads must include warnings on vehicle CO2 emissions. If the rule successfully negotiates the rest of the European Union legislative process, 20 percent of a car ad would have to warn or educate consumers about the CO2 emitted from the vehicles advertised, as well as their fuel consumption. The 20 percent rule would apply to overall space in a print or internet ad and overall ad time for TV and radio commercials. "As you can imagine, it is not something that we would be particularly happy about," says a spokesperson for an auto industry trade group. Ad companies are also not thrilled since the rule could cut into the $8.6 billion a year that automakers in Western Europe spend on car ads.

Labels: Europe, greenhouse gas emissions, Grist