Why SmartPly OSB is a smart answer for a cleaner, greener Glastonbury

The Glastonbury Festival is almost as famous for its muddy quagmires as it is for featuring some of the biggest names in rock and pop and, even with sunny spells forecast for last weekend's event, festival-goers invariably arrived armed with welly boots and umbrellas. Whilst organisers and fans alike always hope for good weather, SmartPly and Greenpeace worked to put into place the means for a "greener and cleaner" element to the festival experience.

Greenpeace and SmartPly have worked together on several projects, including an energy efficient lighting installation at last year's 100% Design, and at previous Glastonbury's with the robust and solid SmartPly OSB (oriented strand board) being used for tables, recycled tyre and cafe seating and even the Greenpeace Glasto crew site office and canteen, all of which are used again and again, year after year. This year, SmartPly's donated 18mm thick SmartPly OSB3 helped create a cleaner, greener Glastonbury with the exterior resin bonded structural panels creating a huge public shower area, which proved to be extremely popular with festival-goers wanting to freshen up.

The Zero Carbon Showers were powered for both the pump and water heating by an Ökofen wood pellet boiler and solar panels, and the design conserves water by using low output shower heads ensuring you get clean without wasting water.

Mark Townson, site manager for Greenpeace at Glastonbury says "The FSC certification of SmartPly is vital, and it's a product we've used before and will have a need for again. Anything we can do to make the festival experience a greener and cleaner one - for both the festival go-ers and the climate - is important and environmentally responsible choices for all the materials help to make this happen".

Geoff Rhodes, marketing and business development director for Coillte Panel Products, SmartPly's parent division, says "We continue to make commitments to environmental responsibility and it is testament to our forest certification and diligence from trees to trucks which enables Greenpeace, an organisation with uncompromising standards, to regularly use our products. This year we were particularly impressed with the clever design of the shower system which minimised waste and worked with nature."

3 July 2008