If you are like me, you’re going to hit as many music festivals this summer as your wallet can handle.
We’ll be joined by hundreds of thousands of people heading out to enjoy great band performances. Of course, that also means hundreds of thousands of people eating packaged food and drinking bottled water (and other substances) and all the waste that entails. And let’s not forget the tons of fossil fuels burned just getting there.
Fortunately, many festival programmers and organizers have been working behind the scenes for years to try to mitigate some of the environmental impact of these annual throngs of music-lovers. They all adhere to the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ principles at the heart of greening their festivals, but that is just the beginning. Most are upping the ante on green initiatives.
Here I highlight just five of this summer’s festivals and their creative and inspiring eco-initiatives:
1. Bumbershoot, Seattle
Bumbershoot is a leader in green festivals. To begin with, organizers have creatively applied the re-use principle by turning their old signage into new Bumbershoot bags. A small local business called Alchemy Goods turns old rubber and vinyl into bags. 
All this is after the festival signs have already been used multiple times. First they print most of their new signage locally on 100% recyclable material using 100% VOC and solvent-free inks. Then they re-use a large percentage of the previous year’s signs for the current year’s promotion.
By Justin Van Kleeck •
October 4, 2008
A few days ago, I went to the 12th annual Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival with a good friend (who is also the founder and Executive Director of GreenRight, a new environmental/social-justice nonprofit). Coordinated by the group Voices for Animals and run entirely by volunteers, the event brings together people of all stripes and shades from throughout central Virginia for a smorgasbord of green goodies.
After just a few moments at the Festival, you will be able to understand why it usually draws in about 6,000 visitors, making it one of the largest vegetarian festivals in the United States. In modest Lee Park in downtown Charlottesville, and spilling over into surrounding parking lots, local natural foods stores, organizations of all sorts, restaurants, and other vendors provide an unbelievable variety of goods, information, and entertainment. Add to that live music and animal adoptions, plus free samples and fun activities like face painting, and you can easily spend the entire day with other folks who are interested in livingly compassionately towards animals and the planet.
Just to give you a snapshot: Walk up to the table of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation and take part in a poll of transportation methods used by attendees. Depending on your mode of locomotion (biking, driving alone, carpooling, etc.), you will get a colored rock that you then put in a clear tube. As the piles grow and the tubes fill, everyone can see which transportation methods are most popular–though the most popular may not be the most sustainable as well.
By Robin Shreeves •
September 3, 2008
On Sunday, September 7, Philadelphians and those from surrounding communities (including me) will be celebrating all things green at GreenFest Philly. The festival coordinators expect about 20,000 people and their reusable water bottles to descend upon the Headhouse Square section of the city located on Second Street between Lombard and South Streets.
The theme for this year’s festival is water quality. There will be a Water Quality Symposium where speakers will cover topics such as Residential Water Use and What’s Happening In Your River? (that would be the Delaware River for those unfamiliar with the region). There will also be several short films at the EcoFilm Forum that will cover water topics.
While water is the theme of this year’s festival there will be much more going on. 200 exhibitors will display their green causes/services/merchandise. There will be plenty of kids activities and even a Sweet Green Organic Pastry/Dessert Contest. Oh, YUM! And much, much more.
As I strolled through the Great Hall at Navy Pier a few weeks ago, trying out samples of raw carob cookies from Karyn’s, a raw/vegan restaurant here in Chicago, I thought that I had died and gone to green heaven.
Crowds of people were walking and riding their bikes to the biggest green celebration to hit my city every year, and I just could not get enough of the samples of vegan food, the representatives from green non-profits explaining what they do, and the friendly green business owners promoting their products.
Yet the Green Festival has its detractors. Some people say it is not green enough, others say that just the idea of a green trade show is hypocritical. After all, how can an event that burns fuel to promote the environment really be good for the Earth? Here are the five things about the Green Festival that I think are truly, remarkably green (and one issue that still needs a lot of work).
