The 2009 Isle of Wight festival saw the second year's involvement of the Eco Action Partnership with the event in line with our five year plan, and below are some of the things we managed to do together, with some pictures and some nice news stories from the press.

We produced an Environmental Policy and a Traders Agreement for this year, and started working with Eventberry, an event specific checklist designed to ensure BS8901 compliance in our effort to make sure we were concentrating our efforts in the right direction.

We were very honoured to receive an ECO Award from A Greener Festival for our approaches to tackling the issues raised when holding such a large event. We had to submit a detailed application outlining our eco-credentials, and hosted a delegation over the weekend who were there to check out our progress and assess our eco-ness. We are still waiting for some of the results to come in, notably the figures for the overall and individual carbon footprints, so we will be updating this site when we get confirmation and can verify them.

We were also the first festival to hook up with the Department of Energy and Climate Change in helping them get their message across on Climate Change and the upcoming talks in December in Copenhagen. Read below as to why we thought it was a good idea to become involved with the Government.

Hope you all had a good time, and if you have ideas on how the festival should become more environmentally responsible next year please drop us a line on the Eco Action Twitter or Facebook pages.

At the entrance to the main arena there was an area called THE HIVE, which was both a chill out zone with our straw bales, and a collection of tents housing some of our partners at the festival. There was local produce on sale courtesy of the Taste of the Wight people featuring the Isle of Wight fish fingers. Also a large tent with our conservation partners Gift to Nature in, who were there both giving out information on our campaign Give Bees a Chance and selling some of the fluffy bees to help fund the research project on the Isle of Wight.

Our thanks also go the massive support and time given by the scouts over the weekend raising money by selling the bees both for their own eco-projects and to help fund the bee research project. We had thought we would raise more money than we eventually did for both projects, but due to there being other charities on site collecting for their own worthwhile causes at the same time, the money raised unfortunately fell short of our target figures. However, it is all a learning curve and we have a cunning plan for next year. For more information on our Give Bees a Chance campaign, click on the bee.

Medina High School's Green Team were also operating out of a Yurt, collecting information which is being used towards our carbon footprinting of this year's event.

Renewable fuels. We concentrated our efforts into making the festival use renewable energy exclusively in at least one area, so this section was powered by both solar panels, supplied in a joint venture between local firm Engenius and the Energy Saving Trust who were on hand to give advice and information to anyone who wanted to know more, and generators powered solely by bio-diesel. Again, next year we would like to be using more of this and less diesel in the main generators.

We did use wind power from a 2.5kw turbine last year, but it wasn't to be this year for a couple of factors, one being the question of whether the site is the right place to generate enough energy from the wind available to justify the cost. We decided for this year that bio-diesel and solar was the right way to go, but have yet to make a decision on this for next year's event.

As part of our approach to promoting carbon responsible transport, we provided secure bike racks scattered about the festival site so that people could safely leave their bikes whilst they weren't using them. For those of you who didn't bring theirs along we once again hooked up with the London Bicycle Tour Company who were hiring bikes on site from the Thursday night all through the festival.  On the Saturday and Sunday we organised the Big Festival Bike Ride which took people off the site for a couple of hours and on a small tour of some of the island's beautiful conservation sites. We'd like to thank Ian Boyd from Gift to Nature for being our tour guide on both of these, and we'll definitely be doing this again next year, so make sure you either bring your own bike along, or make sure you get your order in early to our hire company to reserve your cycle for the ride.

Through the press and the website, we promoted the car sharing scheme through Liftshare again this year, and increased the number of users from 120 to 461.

We are busy collating all the results from this year so that we can post figures of the carbon footprint of the event. Please watch this space.

We all thought very long and hard about getting involved with a Government Department and the possible negative connotations that this might have. We were very concerned there was a danger that you might have thought it was too much like being preached at when all you wanted to do was chill out for the weekend and listen to some music. But we then thought that the message of Climate Change, and in particular of the approaching Copenhagen summit in December, was important as well, so we said yes to working with DECC at the festival. It was a low key presence, but we made sure that they were included in our all press releases, Ed Miliband gave a very short video address to the event on screen and on ITV2, we had a couple representatives with us backstage to talk to the press and artists, and there were a few banners around the site giving out the website address should anyone wish to investigate further for themselves.

We continued with the same initiatives that we started last year, increased visibility of recycling bins, educating traders and punters alike about the need for responsibly disposing of their waste, and using the programme, website and video flash messages to get the point across. Most of the waste that was generated by the festival was sent through to the Waste to Energy plant on the island where it was sorted out into compostable or recyclable streams. The waste that couldn't be recycled is burned at very high temperatures (using a process known as pyrolisis) and is used to produce heat and energy that can power up to 2,000 homes.

We also thought about the smaller things that can make a difference with the waste generated by 55,000 people, and with the aid of Medina School we distributed posters to householders along the main routes to and from the festival to be displayed in their windows allowing Biffa representatives to enter their gardens to clear up the litter left behind. This was taken up by a large percentage of people.

Well actually, a lot of you didn’t leave anything behind at all. Our plan this year was simple. Could we persuade some of you not to leave your tents, sleeping bags and personal possessions behind when you left the festival this year? The rubbish left last year was staggering, and all had to be disposed of somehow. Some of it we managed to get collected through the local scout groups but a lot of simply went to landfill. Again, without preaching, we felt that we had to try and change the perception that it's ok to leave stuff behind and someone else will collect it and deal with it.

The honest answer is that most aid agencies won't accept the flimsy cheaper tents that are inexpensive to buy, so there is little alternative but to bin them.

So, this year, we publicised the message again through our available media outlets, both on and off the site, and through the use of posters, concentrating our main efforts on three separate fields. We also used Twitter and Facebook on the Sunday to remind people of the message, and this seemed to have worked.

The overall rubbish was reduced by about 50% on the amount left last year, and in the fields that had the most publicity and posters, they were generally clear.

The scouts did come in later on the Monday to collect what was left, but reported that they were struggling this year to find enough tents as opposed to being somewhat overwhelmed by the quantity last year.

We'd also like to thank Global Motion who donated and paid for transportation of a container load of equipment to the Antigua Scout Associations; as well as Wightlink who facilitated the transfer of the container off the island.

So, thank you for doing just a little bit extra in helping to reduce the event's footprint this year.

This year we made sure that each artist performing got our press pack, which contained information about our research programme into the bees, and also climate change information from DECC. We had a very good response, with artists including Razorlight, Stereophonics, Prodigy, Simple Minds signing our Give Bees a Chance promotional t-shirts for us to auction off. We will be posting details of how you can bid for them here soon. A signed t-shirt was also donated to the Isle of Wight Greenhouse project, who loaned us some of the furniture for our backstage tent.

Special thanks from us go to Goldie Lookin Chain who went on stage covered with our fluffy bees, and to Tim Burgess from the Charlatans who became the face of our video shorts for the screen and ITV2.

Come the new year it will be time to start planning for the next Isle of Wight festival and winning an eco award in only the second year of our five year relationship with the event has shown us that we are certainly on the right lines, but also that we have a long way to go to achieve our goal of being a truly carbon neutral event. From the beginning of the new year we will be posting regular news items on the website letting you all know how we intend to make 2010's festival more ecologically and ethically sustainable than this year, and inviting you to let us know what you think of our aims and goals.

The Isle of Wight council have also planned that all events taking place on the island are to be carbon neutral by 2015, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with everyone there.

Once again, we hope that you had a good time this year, and look forward to seeing you all soon.

Rick, Mark and Juliet - The Eco Action Team