How to make festivals more sustainable
July 26, 2023
It's finally summer. Time to go outside, put on your best party attire and dance the night away under the stars at a festival. But what many partygoers don't consider when embarking on their little camping adventure is what happens to all the stuff they leave behind.
Mountains and mountains of trash, broken tents and camp gear get discarded by hundreds of thousands of festivalgoers every year— like recently after the Glastonbury Festival in England.
There isn't much available global data about sustainability at festivals yet, but Jacob Bilabel says you can see "a systemic imbalance." He's the founder of the Green Music Initiative, a think tank in Berlin that fosters sustainable music events. A festival can be a field for experimentation for sustainable solutions, Bilabel says. He calls this "a circle training for sustainability" and warns against pointing fingers at festivalgoers.
As much trash as a small city
Music festivals basically face the same sustainability challenges as the rest of society, only on a smaller scale: energy supply, the usage of resources, questions of mobility and a circular economy.
A study looking at the ecological footprint of festivals in the UK shows that 3 million festival goers there use roughly five million liters of diesel a year. The life cycle assessment after a long weekend lies at roughly 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions — including transport. That's the amount a small village produces in a whole year.
France has double the amount of music festivalgoers, the US more than 10 times as many.
And when 80,000 people go to a festival over a weekend, they leave roughly the same amount of trash as a city of 80,000 people creates in a year.
Renting tents and using them longer
Trash doesn't just mean packaging, disposable tableware, promo material and decoration. A lot of it is camping gear. In the UK, roughly a quarter of a million broken tents are left behind at music festivals every year, most of which will end up on a landfill.
An average tent weighs 3.5 kilos and is mainly made from plastic. That's the equivalent of 8,750 straws and 250 beer cups.
Especially cheaply produced tents don't last very long. That's why investing in a more robust tent that will survive longer than one party weekend is a good first step to making festivals more environmentally friendly.
Some organizers offer a collection point for tents where a crew then sorts through the discarded tents and repairs the ones that only have smaller damages so that they can be rented out the next year. Others offer their own tent villages from the beginning that can be rented out by festivalgoers every year.
Electro rave with eco-power, deposit system and sustainable food
"A festival is a society, a small city under pressure. At the same time, so much more happens at a festival, often things that are smarter than what we have created on a societal level," says Bilabel.
The Dutch "DGTL Festival" for electronic music for instance has the goal of becoming the first circular economy festival in the world. The power they use for their 40,000 festivalgoers comes from wind- and solar energy. Meat has been replaced by plant-based alternatives. The water that's used in the toilets and showers gets processed so it can be reused. The trash is separated strictly and a deposit system for beer cups avoids unnecessary further waste. DGTL is a global festival that has stations in Santiago de Chile, Mumbai and Sao Paolo.
Fertilizer instead of chemical trash thanks to compost toilets
The smaller "Terraform Festival" with more than 2,000 visitors close to Milan has equipped their employees with electric vehicles, which has saved roughly 250 liters of petrol. They also built their stages from wood of trees that have been destroyed during a storm in the region, which has the nice side effect of supporting local communities. Products at the festival have to be plastic-free.
Meanwhile, compost toilets can considerably minimize the usage of chemicals and water. The research project ZirkulierBar studies how feces from compost toilets used at festivals in Germany can be repurposed as fertilizer. And first results show that this actually works. Even common chemical toilets can be more sustainable if transport paths are minimized, and the waste can be later used for energy generation in fermentation plants.
Hotel trains and party busses save resources
Festivalgoers can do their bit, too. Instead of driving to the festival site by car, it's better for the environment to go by train and use public transport. And if the festival takes place farther away from cities, then car sharing can be a good idea.
Some festivals also offer party trains and buses to drive people from cities to the often more remote festival sites.
"Melt Festival," which takes place in a former brown coal mine in East Germany, for example offers a hotel train service. Festivalgoers can board a train from Cologne or Munich that takes them to the festival site and then sleep on that train during the festival. Tents and air mattresses are provided. This measure alone has saved 20 tons of CO2, according to the Green Music Initiative.
At the same time, the organizers also offered a several days long bike tour from Hamburg to Berlin.
More political support for sustainable festivals wanted
Most festivals are organized by the private sector. So far it depends on the organizers' motivation how environmentally friendly the party will be. That's why Bilabel thinks politicians should set clear rules and regulations.
He also wants festival organizations that are already trying out new environmentally friendly approaches to receive more support in the long run than those who don't.
"Those who are doing this voluntarily are basically being punished because it takes more of an effort and they have higher costs, while those who don't are better off. I think that's difficult," he said.
Certifications can help with a first orientation of which festivals are already trying to be more sustainable. The association "Sounds of Nature" has created guidelines on how festivals can become more sustainable and hands out quality seals after checking several criteria. The NGO "A Greener Future" also hands out respective certificates after analyzing their life cycle assessment. They also offer consultations on how to minimize a festival's CO2 footprint and the use of resources and give tips on how to minimize damaging local flora and fauna.
This article was first published in German.