As a teenager it felt very ‘alternative’ to indulge in a burger from the Veggies van, only ever part of city visits with my environmentalist father. Again, the Green Festival was ahead of the game – it has always served exclusively vegetarian food, including goodies from the legendary Veggies Catering Campaign. The success of Sneinton’s Vegan Market and Doughnotts’ vegan range demonstrate that there is an appetite in Nottingham for this.
Therefore, all the food at the festival will be vegan. One lifestyle change many people are choosing to make is to go vegetarian or vegan, acknowledging that livestock farming is part of the environmental conundrum. Food vendors are encouraged to avoid plastic, and plastic water bottles will be banned – instead refillable bottles can be filled at the new water fountain, funded by the Green Festival. Should you worry that an event of this size uses a lot of energy, it’s all good – the event is run ‘off-grid’, powered solely by solar panels and battery storage equipment. It’s full to the brim of information too, with stalls focused on energy-saving at home, technology, reuse and repair, recycling and more. This year, between midday and 6pm, there will be free live music, family activities, storytellers, stalls from green businesses, craft workers, community groups, charities, artisan food producers, and vegan catering. Regularly attracting around 5000 visitors to the Arboretum on a Sunday afternoon, it’s all about exploring, learning and experimenting. While Extinction Rebellion and the Youth Strike 4 Climate Justice, as well as David Attenborough and Blue Planet, have brought environmentalism and our climate emergency into the spotlight again recently, the Nottingham Green Festival has been a hub for sustainability, animal rights, and protecting the planet since it grew out of the Nottingham Peace Festival in the eighties. Also adding to my experience of environmental awareness was attending the early iterations of the Nottingham Green Festival, which I am delighted to see is still going strong in its 27th year. I have many fond memories of sorting steel and aluminium drinks cans with a magnet – don’t you? My point of view was undoubtedly influenced by having a father who was in Greenpeace and a vegan – that was long before anyone really knew what a vegan was, and when the only vegan option in a restaurant was basically just lettuce. It was mostly about banning chlorofluorocarbons (remember those?) to fix the ozone layer, saving the whale and, of course, recycling. As a teenager in the nineties, I remember when it first became cool to talk about being “green”.
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