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.
In just seven years the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has emerged as the premier music festival in the United States, if not the world. With the biggest names in music from genres across the musical spectrum taking to thirteen stages and providing festival-goers with four days of good music, danceable beats and pleasing melodies, this year’s Bonnaroo, from June 11-14 in Manchester, Tennessee will be no different from the last seven.
But in addition to the mountains of music and non-musical activities, the festival, which last year was named one of eighteen music festivals worldwide to receive the Greener Festival award, added several new green dimensions to its already impressive greening efforts.
Like the much newer Rothbury Festival up in Michigan, festival organizers at Bonnaroo have been hard at work finding new ways to green the festival scene and engage fans in discussions, seminars and educational programs about important sustainability topics and the pressing environmental issues of today. In addition to incorporating an environmental mission statement into every vendor contract, festival organizers have built upon past successful sustainability efforts and mixed in some new ones to give festival attendees a greener music festival experience.
Below are a few of the pre-festival green highlights, but stay tuned to Green Options for green updates, photos, interviews and reports from the ground at this year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
By Courtney Maum •
January 9, 2009
Music festivals without the mud
I like giant music festivals- what’s not to like? Well, the mud, the cold, and the total lack of privacy for starters. And what about all that waste? Glass bottles, plastic containers, and empty potato chip bags (that’s “crisps” for you Brits!) can lead to a major case of eco-guilt for festival attendees.
Thankfully, 2009 brings good news for eco-concious festival goers. Not only have major music festivals like Glastonbury and Bestival gone green, but the clever folks behind MyHab have come up with a better way for you to recuperate in style.
