Current Event - Green Music Festivals

Festival season is upon us; lineups are being released and thousands of people are handing over their dollars to this billion-dollar industry. Music festivals have been increasing in popularity over the last ten years. People come together from all over the world to share a mutual love of music - it sounds dreamy, but the reality, especially post-festival, is a little less charming when festival-goers leave the festival-site unbelievably trashed. Anyone who's seen the aftermath of a concert knows how gross it looks once everyone leaves, the lights go on, and theres trash all over the floor. Festivals, considering how large they are, take this trash heap to the next level. Here is a link to a video made by the Jellyfish Project, which tries to mobilize people to take responsibility for their trash instead of abandoning it once the music is over.

 It kinda take the fun out of it when you see this:

...turn into this.







I did a little research on green music festivals (I chose not to say sustainable, because we are really just talking about the environmental impact here), to see if any initiative is being taken to combat the incredible environmental damage that occurs. I was pleasantly unsurprised to find that there are in fact many festivals taking steps to reduce their footprints. A Greener Festival is an awesome part of the Sustainable Event Alliance; they are a non-profit committed to helping festivals around the world "green" themselves. They even have an annual award for the most environmentally-conscious festival based on a checklist that festivals must comply to to be eligible. I like this because it's a sort of third-party verification, like the ones we've discussed in class, to show the world that their efforts are genuine and not just greenwash.

A HUGE contributor to festival waste is plastic water bottles. As many of us know, a lot of shows won't let you bring any container into a concert, empty or not, so you are forced to buy overpriced plastic water bottles the entire time, and festivarians drink A LOT of water. Some smaller festivals are fixing this by providing reusable cups and bottles that people can fill at drinking stations. This past year I was a volunteer at Telluride Blues and Brews, which is sponsored by Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., and reusable Sierra Nevada pint glasses were supplied to anyone in the festival. In addition to this they also had an entire crew dedicated to managing the recycling and compost of the event and had vendors use compostable plates and cutlery. Steps like these are being taken by a number of festivals; it gets harder the bigger the event is, naturally, but the young festival-going demographic also overlaps heavily with the market segments demanding transparency and sustainability from their brands. It's in the best interest of the event planners to continue "greening" music festivals around the world.