Picture from 2023 Wanaja Festival by Jaakko Meyn.
Text Jenni Rinkinen
Nelonen Media Live is committed to paving the way towards carbon-neutral and sustainable events in collaboration with its event partners. The work is guided by Nelonen Media Live's promise of "Events for a better tomorrow." The goal is to produce carbon-neutral, accessible, sustainable, community-oriented, safe, fair and entertaining events.
We asked sustainability programme lead Anniina Havukainen, Head of Production at Nelonen Media Live, about the situation with the sustainability promises.
Carbon neutrality: Nelonen Media Live will calculate its carbon footprint and aims to be carbon neutral by 2030.
"Each year, we calculate the emissions of festivals with a certified accounting model developed with a third party.
The total emissions of all festivals in 2023 were 8,700 tCO₂e (2022: 8,500). Total emissions remained steady in 2023, despite an increase of 3 per cent in the number of visitors. The average emissions of an individual event visitor were 59.4 kgCO₂e (2022: 60.2). Emissions per event visitor decreased slightly.
We are continuously developing our work to reduce event emissions and, in 2023, we increased the use of low-carbon fuels in transport and generators, among other measures. The most significant emissions from events are primarily due to the participants' journeys to venues, and we encourage customers to travel by public transport or carpooling. The decarbonisation of society and our partners' efforts to reduce emissions will also help us achieve this goal."
Accessibility: Our events are accessible and non-discriminating. Assistants can escort customers to events.
"We clarified our assistant policy and now offer regular assistant tickets for all customers who need an assistant, in addition to conventional wheelchair tickets. Assistant tickets are free of charge. We have added information about the accessibility of events and introduced separate arrival letters for customers who need an assistant. Relevant information about events is also available in plain language.
We have provided training and organised workshops on the subject, and we have inducted our staff. We have also introduced a toilet pass at our events to help lower the threshold for guests with bowel diseases, for example, to attend festivals. With the toilet pass, the customer can use all the toilets in the public area of the event at no extra charge.
In the future, we will increase transparent communications in plain language and we will continuously work to find solutions to improve customer equality at our events."
Durability: We build our operations sustainably, make resource-smart purchases and minimise our waste load.
"We manage our environmental work with the help of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation’s Ecocompass system, which supports the continuous monitoring of environmental impacts. We have taken a lot of small actions from the environmental point of view:
We have increased recycling possibilities at events and improved the efficiency of using deposits.
We make our purchases carefully and, where possible, in an ecological manner.
We rent most of our equipment and strive to choose an environmentally friendly alternative.
Our bracelets are made from recycled polyester and some of our festival t-shirts are made from organic cotton. If we purchase new fabrics or materials, we aim to reuse the products at least three times. If something breaks, we try to fix it before we buy a replacement.
We have increased the number of vegetarian food options, and in backstage, staff and VIP catering no waste comes coffee shavings or from the coffee used. We have increased the use of oat milk.
We joined the Elma network for sustainable music and have been involved in calculating the carbon footprint of the live music industry.
We will test recycling points with people present to ensure and guide sorting , and we are solving the problem of waste from pizza boxes."
Community: We create festivals together with partners and communities – we participate in local development and industry advocacy, and we also require our partners to commit to our joint development and event promises.
Doing things together is the basis for what we do and the starting point for our events. We use local partners wherever possible. The number of our local partners has increased annually and last year we worked with 138 companies, compared to 33 in 2021. For example, we have provided artists with vegan parmesan from Jyväskylä and kalakukko fishpies from Kuopio, customers with shopping centre and ice hockey team experiences, and staff with snack bars from a local retailer and socks from Tampere.
We offer a number of sports clubs fundraising opportunities at our events, and the number of clubs and their commitment to our events has been on the rise. In 2021, we had 30 partner clubs. By 2023, there were 105 clubs.
We are involved in advocacy through, for example, LiveFIN, Tapahtumateollisuus and the Finnish Hospitality Association MaRa's festival working group. In addition to which, we are involved in the development of our event venue communities in various line-ups – most recently in updating the City of Jyväskylä's tourism and event strategy and in preparing a reference plan for the Himos district.
We will continue to work on surveying regional economic impacts."
Safety and security: We organise safe events and follow the safety and hygiene guidelines in force at any given time. We use professional operators and maintain dialogue with the authorities.
"In addition to fire, rescue, public and health safety (security), we have focused on a sense of safety. In 2022, we opened an anonymous communications channel for persons reporting incidents of harassment, and we established a team to deal with these reports. At festivals in 2023, we adopted the safer space principles. In the future, we will also be combining these principles with ticket sales, so that customers commit themselves to the common rules already when buying their tickets.
Some of our producers have participated in the Tapahtumaturvallisuusfoorumi event safety forum, reviewing first aid situations at events, safety communications, building safety and safety management at large public events. We increasingly monitor occupational health and safety issues: appropriate clothing, workload, shifts and coping at work."
Fairness: We create events with professionals and pay fair wages.
"We have invested in the well-being of our staff by developing induction and event break rooms.
We conduct regular employee surveys to collect information annually concerning the well-being, wishes and needs of our employees. In 2022, our employee survey scored 3.99 for employee experience, and in 2023 it was 4.26 (scale 1–5).
The events employ both permanent staff and seasonal workers who are paid either monthly or hourly wages. We also pay fees to all trainees."
Entertainment: We organise a wide range of events from Helsinki to Oulu and from Tampere to Kuopio, offer a wide range of performance opportunities and pay fair compensation.
In 2021, we organised 11 festivals in 9 locations. In 2022 and 2023, we organised 13 festivals and 10 locations.
The number of visitors to our events has increased annually: 142,263 visitors visited our events in 2021, 267,706 in 2022 and 277,101 in 2023. Also, the number of artists has varied each year: There were 191 performers in 2021, 320 in the following year and 315 in 2023.
In 2022, we launched a backstage lounge concept for events, which has enabled us to expand the range of backstage catering and offer this equally to all artist groups, increase the range of non-alcoholic beverages and reduce the waste from catering.
In 2023, together with Teosto, we launched the New Sounds campaign, looking for new artists to perform at our events. In summer 2024, the new artists will perform at RMJ, Suomipop Festival in Jyväskylä and Kuopiorock.
Customers have enjoyed our events: the visitor rating for enjoyment has ranged from 4.03 to 4.07. In 2023, the score was 4.04 (overall rating, programme, performers, atmosphere, comfort, reason to come to the event, area programme)."
Nelonen Media Live (in Finnish) is one of Finland’s largest festival and event organisers, producing a total of more than 20 festivals, concerts and cruises around Finland every year. The festivals produced by Nelonen Media Live include Rockfest, Himos Juhannus, the Iskelmä Festivals at Himos and Pori, the Suomipop Festival in Jyväskylä and Oulu as well as the Kuopiorock festival. Nelonen Media Live is part of Sanoma Group.
