Sustainability at music festivals

Sustainability – Boring Topic?

I used to think sustainability was a boring topic…

Yeah, you read it right. Some time ago, when someone mentioned eco-friendly stuff, recycling schemes or global warming, I would try to deviate my attention to something else. Of course I knew it was an important and relevant topic, but I just wasn’t in the right mood to face it.

However, everything changed when attending music festivals became one of my biggest passions. Besides the excitement of seeing your favourite band playing in front of a huge crowd or the happiness surrounding you and your group of friends while moving from a stage to another, I realised that festivals and, to an extent, music, have a huge power to change people’s behaviour and feelings.

Sustainability at music festivals

Picture taken at We Love Green festival (Firefly solar panels)

I discovered that many festivals nowadays make a huge effort to act eco-friendly and encourage, in a cool way, their attendants to do the same. Just to mention a few examples:

You Can’t Drive to Us

Surprisingly, the transportation to/from the event site is one of the biggest sources of pollution of the environment. That’s the reason why some festivals, such as Øyafestivalen in Norway, decided not to provide any parking space. Consequently, they achieved that 97% of their attendants had to use public transport.

Let’s Be Energetic

The amount of electrical energy that these kind of events need is also an aspect that affects the environment. Lately, more and more festivals are trying to obtain energy from green sources, using windmills, solar panels and even the kinetic energy produced by attendants cycling on statical bikes: sport + acting eco-friendly, what a great combination!

Sustainability at music festivals

Photo credit: Electric Pedals

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

If you’ve ever had the chance to attend a music festival, you probably know how the concerts arena looks after the event: it’s a landfill full of used cups –mainly– and other stuff. The legendary Glastonbury needs over 800 volunteers to pick up the rubbish that people leave there. Therefore, some events are trying to promote reusable cups, or offering some money for each returned cup: you can get free beers if you help keep the festival tidy. Nice deal, right?

Sustainability at music festivals

My friend Rhys, collecting cups at Reading Festival 2016

You can read more about cool sustainable initiatives at music festivals in THIS ARTICLE, written by my colleague Ioana.

At Music Drives Change we would like to engage more and more people to embrace the green side by sharing original and inspiring content that proves that each of us can contribute to make the world a better place. If you have any interesting piece of content or news to share, just send it through.

Would you like to join us on this exciting journey? Let’s keep on rockin’!

Spotlight image: Danny North (Mirror)

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