Russ Spollin
Russ Spollin
Bristol, UK
In-house Sustainability Manager, Consultant, Event Producer and Specialist (waste)
Details of experience:
Russ Spollin has a passion for events and sustainability, working with festivals and community events to help improve their sustainability performance.
His sustainability journey began a decade ago as a workplace union environment representative and has taken him many wonderful places, including deep down compost toilets and high atop mountains of recycling!
His main activities are as Director and Sustainability Manager for Redfest Bristol, a social enterprise arts and community festival attracting 20,000 people annually.
Russ says that his interest in sustainability started to become a professional focus during his time as a Union Rep in the civil service from 2007-2015. He became an Environment Rep and a key member of the cross department cross grade working group to improve our sustainability performance of the organisation. Successes included engagement initiatives on organic/fairtrade food and healthy living, implementing LED and smart lighting technology leading to reduced energy bills, switching to a renewable energy provider, implementing full recycling facilities at all sites, organising free 'Dr Bike' bike maintenance days, and supporting members on mental health issues in the workplace.
His sustainable event management experience began with Brisfest and Montpelier Bean Feast.
At Brisfest Russ had experience as a stage and area manager. Himself and his colleague (who has aviation industry environmental management experience) joined forces and began the early stages of a sustainable event management system.
They completed the baseline measurements and began engagement with a variety of stakeholders internal and external. Unfortunately as Brisfest did not return to an outdoor festival event, they decided to put the project on hold indefinitely. However, the experience was invaluable.
At Bean Feast he was a committee member involved with various aspects of the event. He began to focus on waste, taking on full responsibility for management of waste at the event, ensuring the site was kept litter free and all waste streams were fully segregated. They also measured energy and water. Using IG Tools, a sustainability report was produced and presented to the team, which informed future decisions for the event.
Ross' main project is Redfest Bristol, that delivers a high quality arts event for the community of East Bristol. The sustainability project has been running for 3 years and is proving to be a great success.
Sustainability is represented on the board of directors by himself. They measured their baseline in 2014 and have been making improvements ever since.
Their event attendees have grown exponentially, from 6000 to 10,000 to 20,000, however, our per attendee carbon footprint has decreased. Initiatives such as free cycle parking facilities, encouraging more to walk and less to drive, recycling initiatives, solar powered stages, free drinking water, reusable cups and compostable serviceware have been overwhelmingly well received by all stakeholders.
The last years offered unique challenges and opportunities due to a change of event format - from an single day outdoor festival to a multi day multi venue takeover style event.
Priorities were engaging in a more indepth way with venues and sponsors, promoting sustainability in a broader sense within the community, and improving our environmental management system.
Now, we are looking very positive indeed for Redfest's future.
Qualifications/Degrees/Training:
List of events and projects worked on:
Abbie L Beane
Abbie joined The Offset Project in 2010 and is now leading all sustainability programs as well as spearheading commercial waste reduction initiatives in the Monterey Bay area. She holds a masters degree in international environmental policy and sustainable business and development from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and is a 2004 graduate of Middlebury College. Abbie also contributes to the Product Stewardship Institute, which collaborates with businesses and local governments to formulate extended producer responsibility legislation for toxic products and packaging. Abbie serves on the Monterey Food Scrap Resource Recovery Coalition and on the Carmel River Watershed Conservancy board.
About Abbie:
Each day I am inspired to create a world in which landfilling becomes an antiquated practice. While we are a long way from eliminating waste in the state of California, never mind across the globe, this long-term vision inspires a call to action right now, today. Through the hierarchy of waste reduction (reducing, reusing, recycling, composting and upcycling), we are able to lessen environmental impacts on many levels, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving water and controlling pollution. Not only does waste create toxicity issues, but it also demands that new products be mined and produced in its place.
Waste reduction starts with purchasing materials that will not need to be landfilled after their first useful life. I am also in tune with studying the lifecycle analyses of various products in order to understand which materials may be the least harmful to the environment over their entire lifespan, not just at the end of life.
I believe what makes myself, and The Offset Project 501c3 unique, is that we not only understand high-level certifications and environmental regulations and requirements, but we have a deep and well earned understanding of the nitty gritty details of waste diversion --- with an emphasis on gritty.
We've been inside hundreds of dumpsters, hand-sorted thousands of bags ourselves, worked on the ground in kitchens attempting to source separate their own “waste”, trained and worked with stewarding crews, hauled food waste, and much more in order to understand ALL the logistics of carrying out "zero-waste" concepts.
Our self-deprecating sense of humor and passion for the environment carries us forward each year. Once again, we work not only with governments and law and policy makers, but we work with the haulers, the waste management districts and the businesses themselves in order to understand all of the possibilities and roadblocks on the way to zero waste. Through this understanding, we have been able to achieve some of the highest waste diversion numbers in the country, from 93 percent at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am PGA event (131,000 spectators, players, volunteers and staff) to 96 percent at the Big Sur International Marathon.
I also have one year of experience working with the national Product Stewardship Institute based in Boston, which collaborates with government and business in order to write and inform legislation on extended producer responsibility for toxic and otherwise problematic products at the end of their useful lives. These include materials such as plastic packaging, paint, carpet, mercury thermostats, phone books and batteries.
Lastly, I have specialized knowledge of implementing environmental programs beyond waste diversion, such as water and carbon foot printing, in order to achieve environmental certification for example.
The Offset Project also specializes in selling renewable energy credits to events that have reduced their GHG emissions as much as possible on their own. This funding is then funneled into local renewable energy projects such as solar installations on schools and electric vehicle charging stations.
Qualifications/Degrees/Training:
List of events and projects worked on:
Cameron Little
Cameron Little
Sydney, Australia
SEA Board Member, Consultant, Trainer and Auditor
Cameron Little, Principal of Sustainability Systems & Services, has two decades of experience within the environment, sustainability and corporate social responsibility sector and has been providing sustainability support for the events industry for over ten years.
In addition to an environmental science degree he has trained in Environmental Auditing, Occupational Health and Safety, Workplace Training and Assessment, and Permaculture and he is currently conducting research into Low Carbon Tourism.
Cameron works with a wide range of business, community sector, education, and governmental organisations, helping their sustainability champions to develop and embed effective policies, procedures and practices so that they can progress towards achieving personal and organisational sustainability objectives.
He has worked with events such as Peats Ridge Festival, V Festival, and World Skills Australia. He is Lead Sustainability Judge for the Australian Event Awards, for the Exhibition and Event Association of Australasia, Tertiary Access Group Awards (Australasia) and for the Australian Regional Development Awards, and is also the National Judge for the Australian Sustainable Cities Awards.
Cameron is a practitioner in the field and provides numerous sustainability-related resources and services to events throughout the year from small Council run events to iconic events such as the Sydney Festival and New Year’s Eve in the Sydney Botanic Gardens.
He lectures and provides training through numerous educational bodies in areas such as Sustainable Events, Environmental Auditing, Environmental Management Systems, sustainable buildings, permaculture, and sustainable living.
Donal Flannery
Donal has a wide held experience in the event industry both Ireland and the UK from all types of outdoor events to major festivals.
He is a very good organiser on the ground and gets great fun out of working with people getting the best out of them and seeing the event coming together.
He says that each event contains it's own unique challenge which makes it all the more interesting as you can never predict what's going to happen from day to day including people and the real uncontrollable: the weather.
Qualifications/Degrees/Training:
List of events and projects worked on:
Kristin Cushman
Kristin Cushman
Monterey, USA
Specialist (energy, waste) and Event Producer with Sustainability expertise
Details of experience:
Kristin Cushman provides an on-the-ground approach to corporate social responsibility that is both realistic and sustainable. Kristin specializes in working with companies to structure sustainability policies then initiates grassroots ideas that extend this policy into the community.
Qualifications/Degrees/Training:
Currently being trained to host the Positive Impact workshop for the state of California.
List of events and projects worked on:
Meegan Jones
Meegan Jones
International
SEA Co-founder and Board Member, Event sustainability specialist
Meegan is an event sustainability professional focussing her efforts on using the power of events for positive action while also ensuring that events themselves are produced sustainably.
Her boutique consultancies Green Shoot Pacific provides advice, tools, systems support, training and practical solutions to the events and sport sectors.
Credits include Sustainability Manager for Festival Republic (Glastonbury, Reading, Latitude Festivals, UK), Live Earth Greening Guidelines, project consultant for the UNEP Music & Environment Initiative, sustainability strategy for Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup, and external assessment of ISO 20121 for Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. She was recently Sustainability Programme Manager for Volvo Ocean Race 17/18 and with their award winning Clean Seas programme.
The third edition of her book Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide was published in Dec 2017 by Taylor & Francis and is an adopted text for many university degrees in event management.
In 2018 Meegan authored the guide to avoiding single-use plastics at sporting events. She has also contributed the sustainability chapters to books Routledge Handbook of Festivals and Festival and Special Event Management.
She was a sector expert in the global working groups developing the GRI Event Organizer's Sector Supplement and ISO 20121. She is founder and chair of the Sustainable Event Alliance and has trained more than 1000 events organisers in sustainable event management through 40 local governments.