SUSTAINABILITY AT HYDE PARK WINTER WONDERLAND
Throughout the live events industry, the environmental impact of our work is becoming a hot topic. From the way we generate power to what we do with our waste it is clear that we have a responsibility to minimise our impact on the planet.
At Hyde Park Winter Wonderland we take this responsibility very seriously and are continuously working with our partners and suppliers to explore and innovate ways of lessening the ecological footprint of the event, both globally and locally. The work we are doing in this area ranges from consulting with ecology consultants to ensure we aren’t disturbing the local bat population through to employing cutting edge power monitoring and battery technology.
WHAT WE ARE DOING:
Fuel
We have introduced Green D+ Bio Diesel across all of our Generators and Plant. This means that 100% of all fuel used at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland no longer comes from Crude Oil, but instead comes from Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil.
These oils are derived from food industry waste, fish processing waste and used cooking oil. It is calculated that for every 350 litres of Green D+ burned; Carbon output is reduced by 1000kg, Particulate matter is reduced by 77% and Nitrogen Oxides are reduced by 29%.
We see this as a major undertaking for an event of our size and status and hope that other events follow our lead.
Power
We have installed power monitoring on all our generator farms throughout the park. This allows us to continuously monitor our generators and generator clusters to ensure that no generator is running unnecessarily or inefficiently. We also use power monitoring on specific areas and rides throughout the event.
We are also able to use the data from power monitoring to explore innovative solutions to our power use. Working in Partnership with Power Logistics, we continue to experiment with innovative Hybrid and battery solutions to power certain attractions, to reduce our dependence on Diesel-powered generators.
Waste
We are working closely with our waste partners to explore how we deal with the amount of waste generated by the event, and have set ourselves some ambitious and stringent targets for recycling.
During the event, none of our waste goes to landfill with all our general waste being used for Energy recovery. Also, all of our waste oil from the catering stalls is picked up and recycled into biofuel, and any pallets or reusable timber is donated to upcycling projects. We continue to look at our procurement as part of the hierarchy of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. As part of this, we have banned Polystyrene and other single use plastics (i.e. straws, cutlery, sauce sachets etc.) as well as banning the sale of helium filled foil balloons. The reusable cup and mug scheme at the Bavarian Village has a huge impact on reducing our waste, and by introducing more bottle refill points we hope to further reduce the number of plastic bottles used on site for both guests and staff.
All Christmas trees are deposed of via composting and we are exploring composting for food waste in the future. Stay tuned for further information.
Other areas
Light monitoring
We monitor our light pollution impact on the local ecology of the park by conducting several lighting audits to ensure that the lighting isn’t impacting on the local nocturnal wildlife – like bats for example. All site wide lighting and the vast majority of ride lighting uses low energy LED bulbs.
Sound monitoring
Noise monitoring stations are installed within the event and at several locations outside the event with any excessive noise sources being rectified from our central control.
Travel and Transport
All our visitors are encouraged to use public transport and we have excellent public transport links to the event.
Our deliveries are tracked and we are currently using this data to produce a combined delivery plan to reduce transportation.
Ground & Tree Protection
Working closely alongside our partners at The Royal Parks, we ensure that Hyde Park itself is fully protected from the impact of the event. This includes covering the entire footprint with durable flooring to protect the turf sub-structure, and hoarding off ‘Protected Areas’ that contain a large number of trees.
We also locate all tented or heavy structures far away from any tree roots, do not hang anything from the trees themselves and ensure that no uplighters into the trees are used.