The first Manx Environment Festival has been hailed a success by its creator.

Bill Dale, founder of Beach Buddies, hosted the event over two days on Peel promenade, and given its popularity, plans to host it again next year.

The event brought together some of the island’s biggest environmental charities and pressure groups.

Mr Dale told the Manx Independent more than 1,200 people visited over the two days and he received ’a massive number of positive comments from both exhibitors and the public’.

The festival was such a success that it’s already been announced the event will be held again in Peel next year.

Mr Dale added: ’There was a steady flow of visitors throughout the day and exhibitors were particularly impressed by the knowledge of visitors and their enthusiasm to see major changes in the future.

Exceptional

’The first day was encouraging, especially as it was on a working day, but the second day was exceptional and much better than we had hoped for,’ said Mr Dale.

’We had any number of really positive and encouraging comments from visitors and exhibitors, and it’s obvious that there is a need for an annual festival like this.

’We will definitely be making this an annual event and we have today announced that we will return to Peel again for the same weekend in 2020.’

Some of the groups who had stalls at the event included Manx Wildlife Trust, Manx BirdLife, Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch, the Climate Change Coalition, Isle of Man Biosphere, Suez, Friends of the Earth and some of the student protestors who walked out of school earlier this year.

Mr Dale added: ’We had fantastic support from loads of regular Beach Buddies’ volunteers over the weekend of the first ever Environment Festival .

’I was planning to name them all, but this is fraught with danger as I’m bound to forget someone, so this is just a great big thank you to every one of our volunteers (who also do so much great work on our beaches).

’What a great weekend - we had a great team and we received so many wonderful comments and congratulations.

’It just shows what can be achieved by our people getting together for a common cause.

’Lots of new ideas have been prompted, and we’ve thought about quite a few ourselves, for future years.

’It has the potential to be a really big event in future years, and we’ve started planning already.

’Plus we have a beach party coming up later in the summer.’