Montreal, Monday, June 9, 2008 - The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is immensely proud to participate in the carbon-neutral project launched by Planetair. This project, in collaboration with the Fonds d’action québécois pour le développement durable (FAQDD), allows us to establish a method for calculating CO² emissions at the Festival, aiming towards producing a guide, information tools and training symposiums for the benefit of Quebec festivals seeking to reduce their impact on the climate.

For the duration of the event, the area occupied by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal will be entirely carbon-neutral. Rio Tinto Alcan is pleased to finance the purchase of carbon credits to allow the Festival to reduce its CO² emissions, estimated at 2,000 tons. These offsets correspond to the emissions generated by the entirety of Festival operations, including:

• artists’ travel, and their local movements;
• business trips by organizers;
• movement of employees during the Festival period;
• backup generators;
• the fleet of vehicles;
• energy consumption;
• artist lodging.

And the Festival is involved in additional efforts to reduce its CO² emissions. Also, in keeping with a tradition stretching almost 30 years, the Festival encourages its 2.5 million visitors to use public transit to get to and from the Festival site. These new efforts are added to the work undertaken by the Festival in collaboration with the Consortium Écho‑Logique concerning the collection of residual materials. Each year, the Festival collects 30 tons of recyclable material on its site: 35% cardboard fibres, 15% plastic, (including close to 150,000 cups), 20% glass, 5% aluminum and 25% wood.