What can we do to make Music Festivals Greener and more Sustainable?

It’s not the same anymore. The luscious green fields, home to an assortment of wildlife and family picnics, are now nothing more than a wasteland of human detritus. A sea of abandoned tents inundate the meadow, empty beer bottles and plastic cups float idly on the surface, too immense to be swallowed by the grass, unlike the cigarette butts that will remain entangled within the blades for decades to come. This is the aftermath of Reading Festival (UK).

“It’s pretty disgusting, and a pretty bad mirror on our society,” says Michael Scarlett, the director of Culture Jam, “I think in general, it’s a problem of entitlement, a lack of responsibility, lack of education, there’s a lot of different things there, but the short answer is: It’s problematic.”

This is not an isolated incident, however. Scenes similar to the one described above can be found all over the world, and with festival season fast approaching Australia, the question must be asked: What can we do to make music festivals greener and more sustainable?

Green Music Australia, a not-for-profit organisation and registered charity, reported that 98 per cent of punters surveyed in their 2018 annual report claim they support plastic free initiatives. So, with evidence of environmentally conscious punters, why are there so many festivals that end with scenes similar to Reading Festival?

Well, first there needs to be a shift in focus from reactive methods to preventative methods. For instance, the Tent Recovery Program in England, established by ‘Give Me Shelter’ in an attempt to clean up disused tents after festivals and distribute them to charities, while noble in its intentions, is not a viable solution to sustainable festivals; it’s reactive. On the other hand, Green Music Australia’s #BYO Bottle campaign is more preventative and definitely a step in the right direction. However, is it enough?

Green Music Australia believes their #BYO Bottle campaign will be a roaring success, saying in their 2018 Annual Report that “Major festivals Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival, Lost Paradise and Unify, are committing to action, banning plastic straws and launching staged phase-outs of bottled water and disposable cups. These actions alone will help save truckloads of rubbish from being generated.”. Their campaign is even supported by Brett Bryan, a professor of Global Change, environment and society at Deakin University, who believes the #BYO Bottle campaign is an effective one, saying “We need every little thing we can do to be done. So, those sorts of things can certainly help.”

Blair Palese, the Board of Directors Chair for Green Music Australia says, “Our flagship waste campaign — #BYO Bottle — had a huge impact, preventing more than 1 million disposable plastic bottles and cups from being used at music festivals and events.”

Despite this, Jesse Holwell, a regular festival attendee argues differently, saying “Falls festival was appalling. When we were leaving — we were one of the last people to leave — just seeing the campsites was ridiculous. People left couches, broken gazebos, and tents that they couldn’t be bothered packing down.”. This raises the question of how effective campaigns like Green Music Australia’s #BYO Bottle really are, and what more needs to be done for future festivals.

In the never-ending war against emissions, Green Music Australia also released a guide in January 2015 for festival organisers to follow, outlining four key aspects to consider when planning a music festival. Those four aspects are as follows: Festival Scope (How many fans are attending, Size of footprint etc); Transportation Linkages (How fans will get to and from the festival); Sponsorship and Merchandise (Minimise the amount of consumption at your festival); and Influencing fans (Instil an environmentally friendly ethos into your fans).

These four pillars of sustainable festivals are best exemplified by ‘The Town’ and ‘Stacks ON’, each organised by Culture Jam, and located at Licola Village and CERES environmental community park, Melbourne, respectively.

It must be addressed that ‘Stacks ON’ has since been cancelled, due to it no longer being sustainable. “CERES are always changing their policies and their response to festivals. Last year they allowed us to have more numbers, so we did that, and it was very busy.”, says Scarlett, “Some of the plants got trampled on, and it was just highly congested. It actually came from me, saying that Stacks ON isn’t sustainable at that venue anymore.”

Consistent in their message of “connection over consumption”, found on their website, these festivals are leaders in sustainable partying, following each pillar to the best of their ability. “What I do with a lot of venues is I pitch based on an idea that’s appropriate for that environment”, says Scarlett.

Including crew, around 1700 people attended ‘The Town’ festival in May 2019. With transport being one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, Culture Jam has several policies in place to curb their carbon footprint. They promote carpooling, charging a set fee per car, and extra for drivers that arrive at the festival solo. “Our transport logistics, a big part of it is we’ve found a venue that’s already a town, so relative to other festivals, we don’t have that much stuff, which means fewer trucks back and forth carrying all our equipment. I try to make sensible choice with design, so flatpack stages and things like that,”, says Scarlett, “So yeah, they’re the main two, with carpooling and minimising what transport needs to happen, from a build-up and pack down perspective, with the next step being to look at buses and public transport.”

Furthermore, a big contributor to waste after festivals are sponsorships and merchandise, as plastic and novelty items are discarded freely. Never having had a sponsor, Michael Scarlett says, “The name Culture Jam is in its nature, anti-branding, like Banksy… So, integral to the name, which is already a very anti-branded sentiment, if I was going to get sponsorship, I’d need someone who I’m aligned with ethically.”

Finally, to further promote sustainability, Culture Jam influences its fans to care for the environment, “I just set all the signposts and set the intention, then it’s up to the crowd to adopt it, make it their own and bring their own ideas to it as well.”, says Scarlett.

While ‘The Town’ provides bins for general waste and recycling, and doesn’t sell any plastic, it falls mainly to the attendees to clean up after themselves or be shunned by the community/not invited back to the festival. However, Michael Scarlett, Brett Bryan and Jesse Holwell all agree that the responsibility for sustainable celebration falls to both the organisers of festivals and the attendees.

“I think the obligation is a shared one. The organisations need to give people pathways by which they can make more responsible choices. And then, given those pathways, and their availability, people need to take them and make the most of them. It can’t be one or the other, we’re all in this together and we all need to take responsibility for our choice and actions and their impacts.”, says Bryan.

Having followed all four pillars to the best of their ability, Culture Jam has achieved a level of sustainability that is admirable. Yet more can still be done, a sentiment shared by Scarlett, “You have to make baby steps each year, adding things like bio-diesel generators, worm farms, reusable cup systems… I think we’ve done a really good job from the get-go, we’ve never really sold anything that’s disposable, so we set a really good foundation and now it’s about just going further and further and further.”

One source of sustainability not addressed by Green Music Australia is food — a fifth pillar I’d like to add. Brett Bryan argues, that one of the biggest impacts on the environment is from eating beef. So, is it feasible to switch to more plant-based foods, or lower impact meats like chicken and pork at festivals? Or would this have a financial impact on the festival as people are reluctant to eat vegetarian food? Resulting in the festival being cancelled.

With ‘The Town’ serving mainly vegan food, and no meat, Michael Scarlett argues, “The Town is a model for sustainability, so within that model, it’s really good to explore that, go vegan for three days, you aren’t going to die!”

Five pillars of sustainability. Five. Festival Scope, Transportation Linkages, Sponsorship and Merchandise, Influencing fans, and Food. It isn’t that many. If current festival organisers and potential future festival organisers wish to see a bright future for the planet as well as their individual festivals, they each need to follow the pillars above to the best of their ability. Clear examples have been set out by festivals like ‘The Town’ and others, such as Burning Seed. So, there is no excuse, it can be done, and it can be done well.

The responsibility falls to all of us to make sure we do our part and minimise our impact on the environment when having fun. While it can be argued that the best thing for the environment is no festivals at all, most would deem that simply unthinkable. Our best bet is to minimise our impact as much as we can.

In the words of Jesse Holwell, “Always leave no trace. Always.”