The Council for Responsible Sport is pleased to announce that The Eugene RiverFront Festival, produced by REVERE Event Experiences, has received Evergreen level certification for its sustainability effort. The Evergreen certification is the highest level achievable, indicating that 90+ percent of the Council’s individual list of Responsible Sport Standards criteria were verified to have been implemented at the event. The Eugene RiverFront Festival was just the 21st event to have ever accomplished the feat.
The Eugene RiverFront Festival was a free, 10-day, family friendly event held in conjunction with the World Athletics Championships hosted in Eugene this past summer. Its success was due in large part to the collaboration between the City of Eugene, REVERE, and Kilowatt One, a California-based company focused on designing and executing sustainability programs for live events. “We worked in close collaboration with the City from the initial planning to the final implementation of the Festival to ensure it represented the values that the city’s residents hold dear: minimizing the environmental footprint of the event while maximizing its inclusivity to create a ten-day long destination for citizens to celebrate and participate in the excitement taking place in their community.” Tony Fisher, president of REVERE.
The Council for Responsible Sport provides a framework for environmental and social sustainability efforts spanning five categories: planning and communications, procurement, resource management, access and equity, and community legacy. The festival successfully completed 56 out of 61 available credits. "Achievement at this level demands a high degree of commitment and attention to detail. The collaboration and innovation across all aspects of the event production was impressive and inspiring,” commented Council Board member Bridget Franek LeMay after reviewing the event's credits.
Eugene is no stranger to responsible sport, having co-lead the development of a Citywide approach to sustainable events based on the five Responsible Sport pillars that has become a model for cities across the United States as they seek to maximize the social and minimize the environmental impacts of hosting large events.
Several of the credits that helped the event achieve this certification reflected the community’s legacy of innovation around waste prevention according to Deveron Musgrave, the acting Waste Prevention Manager with the City of Eugene. These included EWEB water refill stations to reduce reliance on single-use plastic, a reusable (wash & reuse) serviceware pilot program and highlighting local businesses and vendors. Additionally, several innovations stood out, such as a Festival Equity Panel made up of community members giving voice to the perspectives and needs of traditionally underrepresented groups and a bulk procurement strategy to reduce waste that applied to all vendors. The festival was hosted on the site of a new city green space and the majority of the energy used for the event came from the city’s predominately renewable-powered grid.
