Music Festivals Are Fantastic But Our Planet Comes First.
By: Will Bentley-Hawkins
Tags: Swapping, Music, Environment, Festivals

Music Festivals Are Fantastic But Our Planet Comes First.

Clever environmental initiatives from festivals helping to preserve Mother Earth.

DGTL Festival’s Meat Free Menu & Emission Compensation (Netherlands)

About 18% of the world’s carbon emissions are thanks to our consumption of meat. Frightening hey! By leaving meat off the menu, god only knows how much land, life, energy and water DGTL are saving. What’s more, the plant-based meals on offer are deeelicious! From noodle salads to middle-eastern eats, there’s a dish here to impress the most staunch carnivores.

In 2019, DGTL is also taking steps to become the first festival to go climate neutral. Welcome to ‘Zero Emission’, a service that allows attendees to calculate their eco-footprint, based on transportation to the festival. After this has been calculated, they have the option to compensate their emissions by giving back to either Co2 ZERO (who buy and destroy CO2 emission rights for big corporates) or Tree For All (who plant trees in The Netherlands and gift money to foreign forest projects). Now that’s just good thinking!

Glastonbury’s Very Own Recycling Plant (United Kingdom)

200,000 people camped on a farm for 5 days means over 2,000 tonnes of waste. To handle the sheer volume, Glastonbury takes initiative building an on-site recycling station.

Every year, over 1,300 volunteers hand-separate bottles and cans to be recycled along with food and biodegradables that become compost. Waste and Farm Infrastructure Manager Robert Kearle says it’s a sight behold when the centre is in full flow. “The place runs like a well-oiled, perfectly balanced Victorian machine”. Most other major festivals gather their recycling on site and then process elsewhere. Not Glastonbury.

Fuji Rock Festival’s Rock Paper Program (Japan)

Scissors, Paper, Rock! Nearing the end of July every year, Fuji Rock Festival takes over the Naeba Ski Resort. Once held at the base of the incredible Mount Fuji, the event strives to find that perfect alliance between music and nature.

One genius project they implement is the appropriately titled ‘Fuji Rock Paper’. This plan uses leftover timber from the forest that would otherwise go to waste and transforms it into branded flyers for the festival.

On top of this, every year 300+ volunteers team up and use these timber offcuts to build a boardwalk that weaves its way through the festival grounds, improving accessibility for the disabled.

You rule Fuji Rock!

BOOM Festival’s ‘We Make Soil’ Compost Campaign (Portugal)

Held on the gorgeous Idan-Ha-Nova Lake in Portugal BOOM is on a pedestal in the sustainability stakes. Pretty much everything you see is built from past editions and materials found in nature, be it, wood, stone, earth or cane.

The ‘We Make Soil’ campaign is what really caught our eye. A joint effort from all involved where food scraps and human manure are collected to create compost.

Did you know you could turn potatoes into plates and cups!? I certainly didn’t. Using polylactic acid (whatever that is) the materials, once used, then become another component of the fertile compost. BOOM returns July-August 2020.

Coachella’s Energy Playground Seesaw (USA)

These days, having phone battery at a festival is just as (if not more) important than actually catching your dream artists. With this in mind, organisers at Coachella have given life to The Energy Playground. Simply, a giant seesaw that converts kinetic energy into electricity for your mobile. The more you ‘seesaw’ the more opportunity you’ll have to Instagram every waking moment of your experience. I can’t imagine the wattage required to power those gigantic battery packs that are generally used to charge phones. Here, it’s nothing more than human movement!

It’s encouraging to see that so many of the world’s festivals are determined to drastically reduce, or even better, halt their carbon emissions. If organisers don’t continue to implement and expand on the ideas that I’ve shared above, there won’t be the opportunity to host festivals on a dying planet. Bleak but true.