Off the Grid: Music Festivals are Going Green
It's less than fifty days to Splashy Fen now, that hedonistic cesspool of mud, music and blood-chemical imbalances. They say if you behave yourself, you're not doing it properly, and the best souvenir is an empty wallet and three-day hangover. But the tide is turning, and like bioluminescent phytoplankton, it's coming in green.
This follows a worldwide trend that has seen major festivals like Glastonbury in England, Roskilde in Denmark, and Paléo Festival Nyon in Switzerland. Many see the festivals as having huge negative impacts, including food waste, non-biodegradable garbage like polystyrene, emissions from thousands of cars, and energy waste. Glastonbury's Michael Eavis has admitted "The environmental impact of festivals is disastrous."
"[Splashy's impact] hasn't been quantified yet, but every festival is: ten thousand people driving to Splashy Fen has a big impact. There's a lot of waste, it has to be dumped or recycled and they already has a programme, but there's so much more that a festival can do," says Andrew Payne of the Green Depot at Corner Café.
Splashy organiser Mandy Carlo says, "The green initiative is really nothing new [for us]. We've always been pretty environmentally aware. Now the Eco Village is bringing in a bigger plan for obvious reasons."
Payne explains: "It's basically a little Utopian concept. Our power will come off the wind, solar, and hopefully the water. The food is not organic, but it is bought from local farms. The locals are often bypassed by ten thousand people. They might stop for a chip and cigarettes, but nobody supports the industry there."
Getting people to change is not an easy task though, especially when you're trying to convince them to act responsibly on the wildest weekend of the year. UK festival promoter Melvin Benn explained in 2008, "My 18-year-old's environmentally conscious, but can I get him to turn the light off? They need an endgame - a can of beer. Not just the promise that they'll feel good. On the other hand, I have 70,000 young people camping at Reading. Not one has a TV, record-player, hair-drier or lights. At home, they'd be burning electricity. At festivals, their carbon footprint is near-zero. And they're seeing 30 to 50 bands at one go."
Payne admits "It is a five year plan, I'd say? nothing happens overnight. We might meet with resistance from stallholders, we might not. One of our main goals to implement over the years is biodegradable cutlery and crockery. It's 100% biodegradable, made from cornstarch. In 21-50 days it becomes compost in the soil. It is more expensive than polystyrene and plastic, but we're hoping if we do it this year, the other guys will take cognizance of it and perhaps in the future the festival will insist that people use it."
"There's a lot of negativism and pessimism toward the Green Movement from a lot of quarters. 'It's a waste of time recycling when half the world just throws their stuff away.' That kind of attitude is, like I said, stupid; because if ten million people recycle, that's a big number. Everybody thinks they're isolated, but we're not. And one of the aims of this venture with Splashy, the Green Depot, and Corner Café, is to bring people together and show them that we're not isolated," says Payne.
And they're not. Lovebox and Bestival, two of the UK's biggest festivals, recently pledged to reduce their carbon footprints by 10% in 2010. The High Sierra Music Festival in California is now selling carbon credits to its visitors, and eight of the ten American festivals drawing 20,000 or more people incorporate recycling operations and environmental outreach programs.
