Zero Waste Music Festivals?

You may find these online resources helpful, though they may be slightly off base from what you are looking for:

- A Guide to Making Your Event Sustainable and Climate Neutral: http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~ewbucsb/EWBWorkshops_SustainabilityGuid e.pdf (I don't know why this is rolling over to the second line of this email, but be sure to copy the entire url into your browser if the hyperlink doesn't work)

- Reverb Eco-Village: http://www.reverbrock.org/site/

- Zero Waste Alliance: http://www.zerowaste.org

I don't much about these personally, though I've bookmarked them for myself for future reference for this very type of thing.

Good luck,
Amy Miller

AS Sustainability Coordinator
Associated Students of CSU,
Chico Bell Memorial Union 005
email: [email protected]
phone: 530.898.3645
fax: 530.898.6782

I attend a large music festival in Coachella, California every year. This year over 180,000 people attended. One of the programs implemented this year was a 10 for 1 trade in on empty water bottles for full ones. Over the course of three days I saw numerous people picking up empties and returning them. It even became second nature when you finished a water to look for someone who was collecting. There was always someone nearby. goldenvoice.com were the promoters, and if contacted I'm sure would provide information. They had many human powered rides in the festival as well as shuttle services and parking areas in Palm Springs and Indio.

Hi there Bob,

Have you heard of Burning Man? It's a wacky art festival that attracts 40000 people each year to the Black Rock Dessert in Nevada. It has a LNT (leave no trace) policy that is adhered to better than any other event of any size that I've ever heard of. I'm sure that the organisers would be more than willing to share some of their practices with you. Check out http://www.burningman.com/environment/ for more. Note that there's an appropriate theme for this year too.

Cheers, Scottie.

Check out the best practices and success stories at EPA's "Recycle on the Go" webpage. There's a section on special events. The Lowell Folk Festival in Massachusetts recycled more than 90% of its waste in 2003.

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/conserve/onthego/

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/conserve/onthego/documents/lowell.pdf

Regards,
Jan

Jan Aceti
Aceti Associates
19 Allen St. #2
Arlington, MA 02474-6809
Ph: 781-646-4593
Fax: 914-931-2038
[email protected]
www.acetiassociates.com

Thank you Scottie,

I actually have several friends who go to Burning Man every year and I am on the "JackRabbitSpeaks" mailing list. I am greatly appreciative of the FSB and the GreenYes lists for ALL of the responses I have received!!! (most of them were off-list) Over the next few months I hope to pull all of the information I can gather into one document and will post it to one of my web sites for free distribution. It will also include a section specifically for road-tripping music fans who tour following "jam" bands. I currently serve as an advisory board member for RocktheEarth and as the Summer Tour Coordinator for HeadCount I worked with The Dead, Phish and Dave Mathews Band managing their voter registration programs. I also serve on the boards of a few other music related non-profits and have some good connections to numerous touring bands throughout the US. Once vetted by some of my friends with zero waste and sustainability expertise, I will provide whatever I can pull together to all of my friends in the music industry to post on their web sites as well. I think it would be great to have a repository for a "Living" document on greening festivals specifically and the music industry in general that could be continually updated with contributions of "best practices" and new ideas submitted by festival organizers, musicians, sustainability experts and fans. Another possibility would be to create a web site with links to the "greening" section of each of the major festival web sites with an agreement that they will update their pages each year w/o changing the url. That might help keep new organic and independent ideas flowing without the need to compile everything. Whatever I ultimately pull together will include "Thank You's" acknowledging everybody who has provided suggestions, information, or links to good reference sources.

Most gratefully,
In the key of green,
Bob

Robert W. Hollis,
CEO Carnegie Partners, LLC
Ph (916) 717-8108
eFax (916) 290-0312
[email protected]
www.CarnegiePartners.com
www.RecyclingJobs.com

Bob,

Here is the link to the "special events" page on our website - with tips, signs, and links for event organizers. Hopefully this is a good example of one of the things you can do to promote and plan for zero waste at music festivals.

http://www.naparecycling.com/special_events.html

Thanks,
Tim Dewey-Mattia

Public Education Manager
Napa Recycling & Waste Services
Napa County Recycling & Waste Services
Northern Recycling & Waste Services
(707) 256-3500 x1204
(707) 732-7384 - cell
(707) 256-3565 - fax

Hi Bob

Glastonbury festival in the UK does a significant amount of recycling, soil erosion minimisation and water pollution reduction.

Cheers
Janine Barrow

Senior Environmental Planner
Level 7, 263 Adelaide Tce
PERTH WA 6000
Tel: +61 8 9268 9656
Fax: +61 8 9268 9625
Email: [email protected]

RockyGrass and the Telluride bluegrass festivals have been 0-waste for a while. see http://www.bluegrass.com/emails/PBEmail-051806.html

And the massive Bonnaroo rock festival is headed that way too. www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/*bonnaroo*_music_1.php

- Dave Newport,

Director
Environmental Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
University Memorial Center
355 Boulder, CO 80309-0207
303-492-8309 office
Web: ecenter.colorado.edu
Email: [email protected]

From the Womadelaide website [http://www.womadelaide.com.au/archive/2007_site/info/index.html]: In 2007 Zero Waste SA will again support the festival in its efforts to ensure that it recycles and composts the maximum amount of waste possible. In 2006, 15.23 tonnes of waste was diverted from landfill, 9.5 tonnes of which became compost. This means that the festival managed to divert 65% of all waste produced, not bad for three days and 75,000 attendances. In case you don't know this, since 2001, all of the festival's food stalls and bars have used biodegradable crockery and cutlery - even the beer cups breakdown over time. See also - www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au

Melissa Miller

Communications Officer (Web)
Environment Protection Authority,
South Australia
E: [email protected]

MUSIC TO OUR EARS
Music festivals across the country aim to lessen their footprint

Last year's Bonnaroo music festival produced more than 1 million pounds of waste (and quite a population of wasted fans), but recycling, composting, and reuse efforts kept more than half of it from reaching a landfill. It's part of an ongoing effort to address the footprint of the annual jam-band festival -- and a trend that continues to grow among music festivals all over the U.S. But a few carbon offsets does not a green festival make, so Grist's Sarah van Schagen tuned in to the eco-efforts made by seven different festivals, and evaluated what's being done and who could do better.