SAN DIEGO, CA – The SHIFT Festival 2017, held in Jackson Hole, WY, Nov. 1-3, 2017, has become the first certified sustainable event by STOKE Certified.
This year’s SHIFT was evaluated against 92 criteria and 303 compliance indicators by a local independent evaluator, Mac Dukart. The event achieved a compliance score of 79% across all four categories of sustainability performance, which is above the minimum threshold of 70% for STOKE Events certification.
Christian Beckwith, Director of SHIFT, stated, “We have been working towards this goal for two years and we’re honored to not only have earned the recognition as a sustainable event, but to also be the first STOKE Certified Event. Working with STOKE to improve the environmental and social responsibility of our event was a perfect match and complementary to the evolution of SHIFT over these last few years.”
Chris Perkins, Marketing Coordinator for SHIFT, concurred. “The sustainable event management tools and templates STOKE provided along with their expertise greatly reduced the barrier to entry and now we have a proven system we can replicate and enhance each year.”
In 2015, SHIFT became the first adopter of the STOKE Events program. Event producers began preparing for a STOKE Benchmark at their 2016 event in 2016 when they set goals to become a zero waste and clean energy event in 2017.
Through STOKE’s collaborative approach to local stakeholder engagement, SHIFT leveraged numerous community partnerships and national sponsors to reach their sustainability goals, including:
SHIFT conducts year-round engagement and advocacy work to protect public lands. For 2017 they hosted an evening keynote called “Bears Ears: 10,000 Years of Public Land” which included presentations and advocacy resources from the Native American organization, Utah Diné Bikéyah.
Keep it Public, Wyoming also provided letter-writing opportunities for attendees to urge public officials to protect public lands and anyone who wrote a postcard was entered into the raffle.
“As an event that mobilizes a national community of diverse and passionate individuals and organizations who are fighting to protect and enjoy our public lands, especially in today’s political climate—I couldn’t think of a better organization to launch with the STOKE Events program. I’m extremely proud of SHIFT’s commitment to the process over the last two years and look forward to seeing them progress from here,” said STOKE Certified Co-Founder, Carl Kish.
For a detailed list of their best practices with photographs, visit their STOKE Certified profile at http://www.stokecertified.com/members/shift or visit SHIFT’s website to learn more at https://shiftjh.org/2019/.
About STOKE Certified
STOKE (Sustainable Tourism Operator’s Kit for Evaluation) Certified is the world’s first sustainability certification program for surf and ski tourism operators and destinations. Through its network of independent evaluators, STOKE verifies the legitimacy of sustainability claims and provides transparency for the public through its certification programs—STOKE Surf and STOKE Snow. STOKE Surf has member properties in Fiji, the Mentawai Islands, Costa Rica, Portugal, Liberia, Baja California, the Telo Islands, and the Philippines, while STOKE Snow has members in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Maine. For more information on STOKE’s members, sector specific tools and templates, and certification process, go to http://www.stokecertified.com/