Hey, so here we go again ... yeahyeah, as we told you last summer: “It's a true story that this quest will never end, but it's even more true that we will never give in.”! Not even after winning the OVAM GROENEVENT AWARD 2010 & 2011, an award for the greenest event in Flanders.

This last one in the category 'indoor events', which means IEPERFEST WINTEREDITION 2011, and as you might know, you're looking at the site of the upcoming edition of this event. So now you know we're holding on (cfr. NO TURNING BACK) to our Green Policy.

We try to give you all info you need on this matter in a nutshell, please be nice and read it in advance, although we'll spam you with all the info on the fest itself too. Nevertheless, thanks for your time & cooperation in making Ieperfest greener than it already was. Once a winner, always a winner !!

First of all one of the most polluting issues on the fest: transport. We kindly refer you to the "Route" section of our website for a few suggestions on that matter. It speaks for itself that we encourage any kind of transportation that minimalizes our ecological footprint: on foot, by bike, by train, by bus or by carpooling!

Smoking is prohibited inside the venue! If you do feel the urge to light up a cigarette, we kindly ask you to do so outside the venue. Keep in mind it is also NOT allowed to throw your (cigarette)butt on the sidewalk, street or anywhere else besides our handmade ahtray tubes. Every cigarette you throw on the ground pollutes about 3 liters of ground water. Fuck that! In case you might be mistaken: this is what these tubes look like...



We also ask you to leave your own drinks at home. That includes the bottle, can or drinking carton around the liquid. And because we don't want you to throw them on the street - in case you didn't get it yet, we're against all kinds of litter – we will provide the right bins. If we keep the streets in the direct environment of the venue clean, the city and people living nearby will be more lenient when it comes to organizing future events in this venue. The Ieperfest team will be more motivated to have other editions because we won't be wasting useful time to clean the streets or pay for it when the city decides to gives us the bill. The less money we waste on stuff like that, the more we can spend on music AND more than music. Oh, yes, if you see someone throwing shit around, don’t be afraid to call him/her upon it. We all have the same responsibility when it comes to keeping our planet clean. This could be the perfect spot to launch that saying of ours again:

DON’T THROW YOUR SHIT AROUND… BIN IT!

And bin it right! Yes, we're still very fond of sorting all garbage correctly. Everything is clearly explained on the bins itself. Please use your eyes and common sense. And if you still have some doubts, just ask someone else if they know what’s up. God forbid, you might actually learn from one another.

In case you're not familiar with the strict sorting system on our fests, we’ll explain it with pleasure. Knowledge is power, right?

Glass and PMD: Fuck it, we don’t want it here, so don’t even bother bringing it to the festival. It isn’t allowed to bring your own drinks anyway. If you DO feel the urge to be an ass and bring your own glass bottles to the fest, we will ask you to give them to us and we'll recycle them. Broken glass on the venue floor might be dangerous. Safety first! The plastic bottles, metallic cans and drinking cartons belongs in a BLUE BIN or bag, and will be used again to make new bottles or even bikes... . NO cups in this bin !!

Paper and cardboard: You can throw all your paper and cardboard in one of the big cardboard boxes that you’ll find somewhere in the venue. This call mainly goes out to the bands and distros (merchboxes). We kindly ask everyone that is planning on promoting a show of their own at our Winterfest to only hand flyers to people ENTERING the venue. We don’t want the streets surrounding the venue to be full of flyers people threw on the floor. If you’ve left a stack of flyers at the entrance, please take the remaining ones back at the end of the show. We would not want to throw all those trees in the garbage!

Organic waste: This GREEN BIN just loves food… food, napkins and wooden cutlery only. Which means that the package the food was wrapped in (if you brought it from home or somewhere else (boo you!)), doesn’t belong in this bin! Even the food doesn’t belong in it as long as it can be eaten, and there is always somebody around that will eat it. Just ask around. And if you don’t find anyone, bring it to the MTM-stage. I bet there will be people around who will finish your plate with great pleasure. Finish leftovers … fatality!

All other stuff that can’t be recycled goes to the BLACK BIN. If you’re holding something that doesn’t fit in one of the groups we’ve just explained before; or isn't a bio-degradable drinking cup or bubble gum, you might hold something that can’t be recycled (yet) and that’s why we call it non-recyclable waste. But hey, you can still put in into the right bin on the fest. There’s a bin for everything!

And if we say everything, we mean everything. That even counts for those who love bubble gum. We guess you love that gum in your mouth, but not sticking on your shoe soles. Therefore we ask you to put your gum, when it doesn't bubble anymore, where it belongs: in the bin or even better on our Bubble Gum Tree. You will find it at the entrance. When you stick it up there, make it count and be an artist. When you see the Bubble Gum Tree, you'll understand what we're talking about. And for those that want to chew and don't have gum, you know where to find them … feel free.

If you want to make a change for a better environment, those changes don’t always have to be that big. Sometimes you achieve more with small, smart changes. May that be one of the main reasons for us winning those Groenevent Awards. Our decision last summer to not use any water from plastic bottles but extra filtered water from the tap, appeared to be a good one. And if we can do it three days on a grass field, we sure can do it one day on an indoor fest. Did you know it takes about three liters of water and approximately 3.4 mega joules of energy to produce and sell a single liter of water in a plastic bottle? Plastic bottles are recyclable, but inevitably a bunch of them end up on landfills, get burned or end up in our oceans. Most recycling is actually downcycling: making lower quality products than the originals, and requiring the addition of virgin plastics and toxic chemicals in the process. There is nothing green about that! After reading (and watching) the story of bottled water online, we decided to invest in a good water system. There will be clean and tasty tap water for all.

And that water, or whatever you will be ordering at the bar, will be served in fully bio-degradable cups made out of corn or sugar beet! Hooray! And what's more: this venue (and other events in the city of Ieper) have taken over our collecting and recycling system for those cups. Hey didn't we write “Why should you follow others if you can set an example yourself?” in our green policy year after year? No need to say more ... Hooray, hooray, hooray!

If you don't know what we rattling about, read on. We want to separate all the cups from other trash. All our cups will be reused to make new bio-degradable cups. We're working together with LOOPLA on this matter. Visit their website www.loopla.org to see how it works exactly. We fully believe and support this company. So help us a hand (or two) and collect those cups by putting them in the blue barrels you'll find everywhere around the venue. Please, only put cups in there. Only this way we can guarantee that the raw material we deliver at Loopla is free from by-products.

And last but not least we're going to remove those nature-killing-soaps out of the restrooms and provide you natural, 100% biodegradable hand soap instead. We're even going to take all the paper towels out of their holders and replace them with fresh clean 'real' towels, and replace them from time to time. Bet your hands will feel 'cleaner'? Please take care of those towels and the toilets itself. Everyone prefers to do their 'thing' in a nice, peaceful atmosphere … or at least we do.

Ok, we might come up with the ideas, we might provide all (sometimes expensive) logistics and we might ask you all to participate in what we believe should be the standard on all festivals and maybe in our daily life, but if you're not using the logistics and not responding to our calls, it would all be in vain.

If everyone here at Ieperfest thinks about what we are doing, if everyone helps out, we will all benefit from it... What we do now determines our future (and our future doesn’t look too bright unless we act now!). And if you want to do more than we ask you to, feel free to do so. We won’t complain at all. You must know that your splendid example could be followed by many others. If you have an excellent idea regarding this matter. Or if you want to help us before, during or after the fest, be our guest and speak your mind! Don't hesitate to get in touch with us through // . We're working day and night on this aspect and really hope some of you take our ideas out, introduce them to other events, friends, your family, at home, everywhere, … it’s a small world after all ...

Oh yeah, we don't claim to be perfect, but at least we fucking try!