(ROSKILDE, FESTIVAL, CAMPSITE, CLIMATE, COMMUNITY, GREEN)
By Henriette Jacobsen
ROSKILDE (Reuters Life!) - Music and partying are the main ingredients to a good rock festival, but Denmark`s Roskilde Festival also aims to encourage guests to save the planet.
One of Europe`s largest rock music extravaganzas has created an environmentally friendly campsite for this year`s event which starts on Thursday and comes six months before the United Nations` climate conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
"We have created this Climate Community because we want our visitors to take a stand on climate changes and especially the consequences of the changes in the third world countries," spokesman Esben Danielsen told Reuters.
Campers are encouraged to recycle their garbage, and to hop on wired exercise bikes to generate electricity to recharge their mobile phones or iPods.
Only low-energy LED lighting and recycled materials are being used at the campsite.
To join Climate Community guests need to create profiles on a festival website and prove they have taken "green footsteps," such as throwing a green Roskilde pre-party, making a green dinner, riding a bike or public transport to the festival.
Visitors who have got three footsteps out of 10 choices will get special bracelets entitling them to reserve a spot at the campsite and take part in activities at the camp.
The activities include CO2 limbo dancing, where the bar is low for low-carbon nations and high for the industrial West, and a silent disco where dancing makes the dance floor light up.
Spokespeople from various non-governmental organizations and climate scientists will give lectures on climate change.
"It`s important to combine fun and serious elements," the festival`s spokesman said.
To be a climate role model the festival has bought its own wind turbine, bought carbon dioxide emissions quotas and made a deal with an energy company to get most of its electricity from wind turbines.
The organizers hope that 65,000 people will visit the festival this year and that more than a thousand of them will stay at the Climate Community camp.
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
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