BALANCE: A New, Fast, and Innovative Way for Your Festivals & Tours to Balance Their impact.
Deliver a Lasting Legacy Beyond Carbon Neutrality for Festivals and Tours
Balance provides a new, rapid, and innovative way for your festivals or tours to go beyond simple carbon offsetting. We combine tangible biodiversity benefits, respect for human rights, and positive socio-economic impacts for local communities, all while taking real verified climate action.
Save time, money, and reputation for your festivals and tours.
Forget complex and costly carbon assessments. Our straightforward mechanism quickly calculates your event’s average carbon footprint. More importantly, Balance offers a credible and PR-safe alternative to the often-criticized ‘carbon offset’ industry. Our extensive outreach with the NGO community ensures this approach is publicly sound.
Balance Festivals & Tours + Biodiversity + Climate + Jobs = Real Impact
We empower festivals & tours to Balance for biodiversity, offering a transparent and trustworthy way for your team, audiences, artists, and environmentally conscious Gen-Z fans to take meaningful climate action.
- Efficiency First, Then Balance : We recommend investing savings from avoided complex CO2 assessments into efficiency measures and reductions. Then, Balance the remaining unavoidable emissions, including audience transport.
- Local, Long-Term Impact: Balance plants and protects biodiverse, long-term natural forests near your event, creating local jobs and providing verified carbon sequestration that truly works.
- A Shared Legacy: Balance delivers lasting positive impact for your artists’ audiences, local authorities, and neighbouring communities.
Here's why:
Balance Saves Time and Money for Festivals & Tours
- No More Complex Assessments: We've eliminated the time-consuming, complicated, and expensive traditional carbon assessment process.
- Average Emissions Factor: Our system has already calculated the average CO2 emissions per audience member, considering event production data and audience transport, divided by audience size.
- Industry Standard: We acknowledge the accepted industry figure that, on average, 80% of CO2 from greenfield festivals and large tours comes from audience transport, and 20% from production.
- Invest in Reduction: We strongly advise redirecting the cost savings from avoided assessments into implementing efficiency measures and reductions, with expert assessment advice readily available from organisations such as AGF.
- Audience Empowerment: By integrating the small Balance cost into the ticket, you empower your audience to directly contribute to balancing the festival or tour's impact, and we hope that the audience will take the small positive action
Simple Ticket Integration with Flexible Finance Options for Festivals or Tours
HOW DOES IT WORK?
There are two straightforward ways to account to Balance.
1. Add £1 to the Ticket Price. For Greenfield festivals or large stadium/arena shows, simply add £1 to the ticket price. This covers the average of 23 kg of CO₂ emissions per audience member. We've included a 10% margin of error.
2. Incorporate into Ticket Price: You incorporate the cost of Balance within your existing ticket price. Market your event as Balanced and reconcile with us after the production based on the actual audience size
The choice of pricing is up to you.
- The event chooses its Balance Forest
- For every tonne of Balance from this Forest, we marry the planting of an extra sister Tree near your festival creating two festival forests.
- The tour provides expected audience numbers.
- Balance provides branding for the Festival publicity to communicate with maps showing the location of your Forest.
- Audiences are encouraged to use this as a facility throughout the year.
- 100% of the Balance cost is applied to ticket sales.
- After the event, the tour pays for the Balance Units (and if you like, you all can come and plant the trees with us.)
Powerful Marketing Collateral for Festivals and Tours
- Receive a dedicated Balance® logo and certificate.
- Access a range of marketing materials to clearly communicate your commitment to biodiversity, human rights, socio-economic benefits, and climate action.
- Your festival and tour forests become a unique extension of your brand, fostering ongoing and growing engagement with your audience.
- We furnish you with a yearly report on the biodiversity and socio-economic benefits as they happen, which you can directly share with your databases for transparent communication with your audience.
- Our team has a proven track record, including planting trees for Glastonbury Festival 30 years ago, which demonstrated positive local benefits in their license application.
The Process
Becoming a BALANCED Festival or Tour
- Choose Your two Balance Forests: Select forests supported by our program.
- Twin Forests, Double Impact: For every tonne of Balance from your chosen forest, we plant an “Extra Tree” near your festival or tour’s location, creating two dedicated forests for you.
- Provide Audience Estimates: Share your anticipated audience numbers.
- Branding and Communication: We supply annual biodiversity and social economic reports from your Forest so you can share them with your audience. Balance provides you with PR & marketing materials, including maps showcasing your forest locations, to further engage your audience.
- Year-Round Connection: The program supplies an event branded Forest extending your sustainable impact into your local community . Encouraged your audience to use your lasting legacy they can visit and connect with throughout the year.
- Post-Event Reconciliation: After the event, you pay for the Balance Units based on ticket sales. And if you like, you and your audience can come and join us on planting days!
BALANCE TOURING AND LIVE EVENT METHODOLOGY
NEXT STEP
The science behind the touring methodology
| Event size | Avg floor area (m2) | Avg # of attendees | kgCO2e venue | kgCO2e attendees | kgCO2e Artist | kgCO2e/event | tCO2e/event | kgCO2e/attendee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Festivals | 32,500 | 65,000 | 12,619 - 1% | 1,188,190 - 82% | 240,162 - 17% | 1,440,971 - 100% | 1,441 | 23 |
| Stadiums | 37,500 | 75,000 | 14,560 - 1% | 1,392,049 - 82% | 281,322 - 17% | 1,687,931 - 100% | 1,688 | 23 |
| Amphitheatres | 8,750 | 17,500 | 3,398 - 1% | 324,812 - 82% | 65,642 - 17% | 393,852 - 100% | 394 | 23 |
| Arenas | 6,250 | 12,500 | 2,427 - 1% | 232,009 - 82% | 46,887 - 17% | 281,322 - 100% | 281 | 23 |
| Large Venues | 1,500 | 3,000 | 355 - 1% | 55,682 - 83% | 11,207 - 17% | 67,244 - 100% | 67 | 23 |
| Medium Venues | 350 | 700 | 83 - 1% | 10,643 - 83% | 2,145 - 17% | 12,871 - 100% | 13 | 19 |
| Small Venues | 112.5 | 225 | 27 - 5% | 455 - 79% | 96 - 17% | 578 - 100% | 1 | 3 |
Calculation by Ecometrica: ecometrica.com. BALANCE Partner organisation.
Balance my festival or tour: Ecometrica use fire safety regulations to establish maximum venue attendance.
BALANCE® methodology
Our methodology translates to six contractual obligations that are the highest standard in the industry, and which all our planting partners must adhere to:
1. Permanence 99yr contracts vs current 40yr standard
2. Indigenous species planting Long-term natural forests
3. Annual reporting Literally see the benefits grow each year
4. Human rights Ensure socio-economic wellbeing of locals
5. Additionality addressed: Guaranteed no double-counting
6. ‘Force Majeure’ accounted for: Partners must replant in the event of natural disaster