During 2010 Face Your Elephant travelled to festivals in the UK to educate festival-goers about the science and engineering of climate change. As part of this we encouraged people to calculate their carbon footprint. Now that the festival season is over, we can begin analysing the data collected by our volunteers. We undertook 2 surveys; one to deduce the annual emissions of festival-goers, and another to gauge what the visitors to our tent knew and their attitude towards climate change.

Whilst the research into the data at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development at De Montfort University is ongoing, here are a few interesting bits of information about the carbon footprints of festival-goers. Its interesting to note that 6.4% of our surveys were completed by vegans (only 0.6% of the population in 2007 classed themselves as vegan) and that lots of people questioned considered their household practices to be green. The number of people who live in each type of residency are largely the same as the current housing stock, showing that the range of respondents at festival represent a decent cross section of society.

Check back in the coming weeks for an in-depth analysis of the survey, along with the results from the survey into festival-goers attitudes to climate change and knowledge of the subject.