How This Firm Helps Music Festivals Throughout the US Be Extra Sustainable
Plastic water bottles, beer and soda cans, meals packaging, uneaten meals, random knick-knacks. Over the course of a multi-day music competition, as tens of hundreds of individuals go to totally different phases to get pleasure from their favourite artists, these are a number of the most typical sorts of trash that refill the rubbish cans and canopy the bottom.
Large music festivals like Coachella can generate as much as 212,000 pounds of trash per day. And with hundreds of music festivals occurring around the globe every year, the quantity of waste generated by the trade will be monumental. However there are essential steps that organizers can take to scale back their waste footprint.
World Citizen Pageant, for instance, pursues net zero impact by lowering and offsetting emissions, bettering composting and recycling, and enlisting sustainability volunteers to advertise and educate about zero waste. (Keep tuned to be taught extra about our sustainability efforts at this yr’s Global Citizen Festival: NYC and Global Citizen Festival: Accra.)
For Electric Zoo, happening Sept. 2 by means of Sept. 4 on Randall’s Island in New York Metropolis, lowering waste can be constructed into the expertise to make sure competition goers have a straightforward expertise and the environmental influence is stored to a minimal. Beginning in 2011, the competition took steps to scale its sustainability, when it launched improved recycling and composting containers, phased out plastic water bottles and expanded water refill stations, required distributors to make use of compostable utensils and meals containers, banned meals sourced from manufacturing unit farms, and promoted zero-emissions transportation.
The competition additionally enlists dozens of volunteers organized by longtime competition clean-up crew Clean Vibes to verify the grounds are tidy all through the occasion, waste is sorted correctly on an ongoing foundation, and objects that may be recycled are carried out so correctly.
Clear Vibes fashioned in 1997 in response to the shortage of efficient waste administration at music festivals. In case you’ve seen any of the Woodstock 1999 documentaries which have come out lately, you know how bad the problem was at some events, with trash and recycling capability utterly overwhelmed at occasions.
The corporate developed its strategy at festivals for the jam band Phish after which branched out to different festivals akin to Bonnaroo, Extremely, Panorama, and All Day I Dream, in addition to different sorts of occasions. Along with maximizing composting and recycling at websites, the staff spends quite a lot of time educating festival-goers concerning the significance of environmentally helpful waste administration.
“Our mission is to actively encourage and promote recycling, composting and correct waste disposal,” Clear Vibes notes on its web site.
“We hope to teach and encourage a brand new technology of accountable stewards,” the group mentioned. “Our objective is to divert waste from landfills by rising the quantity of fabric that’s recycled and composted, thereby vastly lowering the ecological footprint of outside festivals and occasions.”
In 2019 alone, Clear Vibes labored 106 occasions and diverted 2.7 million kilos of waste from getting into landfills. Over the course of its 25-year historical past, the group has diverted greater than 21 million kilos of waste.
Diverting waste by recycling and composting protects the worldwide setting. Globally, international locations generate billions of tons of solid waste annually and the overwhelming majority of this rubbish will get despatched to landfills, dumped into our bodies of water and landscapes, and burned at amenities. These strategies of disposal not solely pollute communities, inflicting myriad well being issues, in addition they launch greenhouse fuel emissions into the environment, fueling the local weather disaster.
Music festivals are a concentrated microcosm of client tradition and might turn out to be engines of air pollution. However they will additionally turn out to be stewards of change by instilling values of sustainability.
Clear Vibes’ subsequent cease, Electrical Zoo, will function dozens of high DJs and producers from all through the digital music scene, together with John Summit, Porter Robinson, Tchami, Qrtr, Carl Cox, Vnssa, and plenty of extra, exhibiting that the organizers are devoted to musical excellence. By bringing the Clear Vibes staff again for an additional yr, it reveals it is devoted to sustainability as effectively.
Global Citizen Festival is asking on world leaders, companies, and philanthropists to do greater than they’ve ever carried out earlier than to Finish Excessive Poverty NOW. By means of our world marketing campaign and with phases in two iconic places — NYC’s Central Park and Accra’s Black Star Sq. — we are going to unite leaders, artists, activists, and World Residents around the globe on Sept. 24 to realize an bold coverage agenda centered on empowering women and girls, taking local weather motion, breaking systemic limitations, and lifting up activists and advocates. Wherever you’re on this planet, you’ll be able to be part of the marketing campaign and take motion proper now by downloading the Global Citizen app.
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