The Revolution is no Picnic. Oh, actually it is ...

Friends of the Earth is bringing our #RunOnSun Energy Revolution campaign to the Electric Picnic again this year.

And there is still time for you to join us, just!

We're holding our big training workshop for volunteers this Saturday from 1-4pm in the Teachers' Club in Dublin. Come along.

You'll be working in pairs at the festival, so feel free to bring a friend on Saturday. If you vouch for them, they're welcome to join us :-).

It'd be great if you could fill out this application form online before Saturday. But you can do it there and then as well.

You'll do three 6-hour shifts across the weekend, helping festival goers reduce their waste and promoting our Run on Sun campaign, and you'll be free the rest of the weekend to enjoy a great festival line-up. Read our Run On Sun factsheet here.

All the details are below in my colleague Meaghan's email from last month.

Meaghan and I will be running the workshop this Saturday. Hope to see you there.

Thanks,
Oisin Coghlan
Director

P.S. Thank you to all of you who made a submissions to the Citizens' Assembly consultation on climate change over the last couple of weeks. We hear they got over 1,000 submissions, they are still putting them up on the Citizens' Assembly website. You can listen to my Morning Ireland interview about the Assembly on Friday here. And the Stop Climate Chaos coalition submission got great coverage in the Irish Times on Saturday, with the print edition including a table of all our 18 recommendations. You can see the full submission here.

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Meaghan's July email on Electric Picnic

For the last 2 years, Friends of the Earth has brought a super team of volunteers to Ireland's biggest music, comedy and spoken word festival - Electric Picnic. This year will be our biggest venture yet.

Will you be part of it?

Festivals can be intense bursts of waste; thousands of people in a relatively small area, usually eating every meal from a food truck, needing to dispose of each food container. Beer cans often blanket the ground, melding with broken tents on the Monday morning to provide a perfect picture for every Irish newspaper, fodder for festival shame. It's embarrassing, it's disgusting, and it's a blight on the face of Ireland.

But you can be part of a team to make EP the greenest festival in Ireland. Imagine an atmosphere of care, of responsibility, of shared respect for Stradbally. You can be part of creating that atmosphere, and the best part? As a reward, you will get a free weekend pass to the sold-out festival!

Last year, our team of volunteers contributed massively to increased success in sustainability at the festival. In 2015, we took 50 volunteers. That year, 74 tonnes of waste was recycled, and 4.36 tonnes of compostable food waste was captured. In 2016, when we took 120 volunteers,142 tonnes of waste was recycled, and food waste more than doubled, with 10.24 tonnes being composted! A whopping €31,000 was given out to festival-goers who returned their valuable plastic, and considering that the deposit per cup was 20 cent and per bottle it was 10 cent…that’s a lot of cups and bottles!

This year we're taking 150 volunteers...let's see if we can beat our waste records once again!

So, if you are enthusiastic and willing to chat to festival-goers about Friends of the Earth's campaigns, as well as help them figure out which bin their waste goes in, then we want you to join us from the afternoon of August 31st until the evening of Sunday 3rd September.

Sound good? Then apply here now!

Here's what’s involved:

• You will work as part of a team of enthusiastic Green Messengers, encouraging festival goers to separate their waste properly and educating them on Friends of the Earth's campaigns
• You will work in pairs throughout the main arena and the campsites
• You will volunteer for a total of 18 hours over the weekend (6 hour shifts) plus team briefings
• Your weekend pass will entitle you to full access to the festival which you are free to enjoy outside of your shifts
• Your pass includes camping in the Eco-campsite (all FoE volunteers must camp here)
• Transport to and from the festival will be provided (departing from Merrion Square, Dublin on Thursday afternoon 31st August).

Requirements:

• You must be over 18 to apply
• You must provide a deposit that will be refunded in full upon completion of your volunteering at the festival*
• You must be available to be on site from Friday 1st 10am – Sun 3rd September (evening)
• You must be attend an information session in July and a training session in August
• You must read, sign and agree to the volunteer agreement

This is a fantastic chance to enjoy great music & arts, meet fellow environmental enthusiasts and of course contribute to a cleaner, greener festival!

We hope you can join us! Third time's a charm, after all ;)

*We need to ask for a deposit because we can't take the risk that volunteers won't show up, we hope you can understand that! The deposit will be €150, to be paid in one instalment. If you cannot afford this, please get in touch with us as we don't want financial difficulties to prevent anyone from taking part.