Concerts Going Green: Part 1
Hi everyone!!
In my previous posts I’ve talked about the many pollutive aspects of live music events such as concerts and music festivals. In this post I will be delving into how these live music events are starting to become more conscious of their actions and are making an active decision to become more environmentally friendly.
The two main pollutive aspects that these events are trying to improve on would be pollution through energy consumption as well as plastic waste. I will be talking about how these events are trying to curb the problem of plastic waste, and in my next post I will be focusing on how these events are trying to reduce their electricity consumption to the event and at the event itself.
Plastic waste
Another major source of pollution that these events are trying to tackle would be the issue of waste, more specifically, plastic waste. As mentioned in my previous post ‘plastic pollution from concerts’, the 2 main sources of plastic waste during these events would be the tents that are left behind, as well as the plastic cups and bottle used for drinks.
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Tents
As mentioned in my previous post ‘Plastic Pollution from Concerts’, a big contributor to plastic waste during these festivals would be all the tents that the festival goers leave behind that just end up getting incinerated in landfills. As such there have been many initiatives and campaigns set up by various companies and festival organisers to try educate and encourage these festival goers to bring their tent home with them.
One notable one would be Glastonbury Music Festival where they encouraged festival goers to reduce their environmental impact through the ‘love the farm, leave no trace’ campaign.
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Single use plastic
Another source of plastic pollution from these events would be that of single use plastic in the form of plastic cups, bottles and straws. There have been various initiatives across the board to try and eliminate this issue, where many concerts and festivals have simply banned single use plastics all together. According to CNN, Billie Eilish has banned venues of her world tour to give out single use plastic cups, bottles and straws during the event and instead they would have to provide water refill stations. This is expected to eliminate what would have been 35,000 single use water bottles from her shows.
One company in particular, BYOBottle, is embarking on this global initiative to reduce plastic waste at music festivals by promoting the use of reusable bottles instead. They have already started growing a list of partners including venues, festivals and artists. Some notable ones being: Maroon 5, Jason Mraz and NEEDTOBREATHE, all of which have signed off on this movement. According to a press release from Oniracom, a marketing technology partner of BYOBottle, “[when] venues, festivals, and promoters [join this campaign, they] commit to providing water refill stations for artists and fans” and in doing so they will be playing they part in reducing the single waste plastic waste produced.
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Recycling
Some of these music events can’t afford to totally cut out single use plastics due to various reasons. Therefore, the next best thing would be to make recycling an option for all these festival goers. The easiest way to do this, which many of these events are already doing, would be to have recycling bins available all over the event so that the festival/concert goers will have easy access to these bins and will be more willing to use them.
However, some of these events are taking it one step further to try and encourage more recycling amongst their attendees. One example of such a recycling initiative would be the EcoBond introduced by BoomTown Fair. This EcoBond forced the attendees to pay an additional £10 for their admission ticket, and they could only get their money back if they exchanged a bag of recyclables/waste for it at the end of the event.
My next post will be a continuation of this one where I will be talking about how these music events are trying to reduce their overall energy consumption as well as encourage the attendees to do so as well.
References:
Sustainable Concerts: Music Festivals Take Steps to Go Green. (2020, March 18). Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://www.drinkflowater.com/blog/sustainable-concerts-music-festivals-take-steps-to-go-green/
Sustainability. (2018, July 08). Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://rainbowserpent.net/sustainability/
Sing, N. (2020, February 13). Why so many musicians are greening up their live shows. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/world/green-touring-intl-c2e/index.html
Home. (2019, June 11). Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://byobottle.org/
Bug, B. (2020, January 09). BYOBottle: The Future of Sustainable Concerts and Festivals. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://burgundyzine.com/byobottle-the-future-of-sustainable-concerts-and-festivals/
Environmental Policy. (2018, June 18). Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://rainbowserpent.net/sustainability/environmental-policy/
Paton, A., McCullen, P., & House, M. (2014, July). What effects do UK music festivals have on the environment & how can they become more environmentally friendly?. In Contemporary Perspectives in Tourism and Hospitality Research: Policy, practice and performance (pp. 0-0), from https://cris.brighton.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/476990/McCullen+TPPP+paper.pdf