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Impact
Written by Julie Boulton – Sustainability Consultant
While there are no specific guidelines or regulations as to what a sustainable and responsible festival is in Australia, drawing inspiration from what is increasingly required of businesses, festivals can start their sustainability journey by making some changes to how they operate. Actions here include reducing carbon emissions (from the supply of energy, increased energy efficiency, transportation, travel, (of both acts and attendees)), making conscious choices regarding food (where it’s come from, how it’s grown and what will happen to the excess (donating and composting), eliminating waste (by not creating it in the first place, encouraging everyone to bring own bottles, supplying water stations, reusable coffee cups and compostable serving and ensuring people – from everywhere – are valued, have access and are included.
But festivals are not just or only a usual business. Festivals bring together visionaries and vanguards in a specific field or a related theme to celebrate achievements, ideas, culture and traditions. Being full fantastical ideas and bold imagination, often provoking a deep exploration of who we are and what we can be, festivals are also – and have always been – about the future. Sustainability, likewise, is also future focused. The simplest explanation of sustainability is that we must simultaneously meet the needs of the present while ensuring that we don’t affect the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
This link to the future makes festivals an obvious place to explore sustainability in detail. And this demands more than merely completing a checklist of (important) actions which are, perhaps, increasingly pedestrian in the sense that anyone anywhere is also expected to carry out such tasks.
Festivals, by their very nature, lead. And in leading, festivals can – and should – harness their inherent creativity, taking deliberate action by having conversations around sustainability with attendees. While, in some cases, this may seem incompatible with a festival’s specific theme, change – at the scale and speed needed – is not going to happen if we continue to operate in our silos, ie we only talk sustainability at sustainability festivals. Talking to people about things they already know is not what the world needs today. Informing, inspiring, and providing opportunities to act however is what we need. Some amazing examples of going further include Billie Eilish’s eco-village, as part of her 2020 Where do we Go world tour, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres world tour app, part of the band’s efforts to make the tour their most sustainable yet and Australian band, In Hearts Wake’s, documentary, Green Is The New Black, which follows the making of its 2020 album Kaliyuga, which was 100% carbon offset of provides amazing examples of going further). Both Billie Eilish and Coldplay also refer their fans to Global Citizen, an action platform which calls on “global citizens” to take specific actions to achieve the end of extreme poverty around the world.
As a vehicle for holding challenging conversations and for driving new ideas, we need festivals now more than ever to harness their brilliance and actively drive environmental and social change. Perhaps this could be a new metric of success for a festival: it’s not just the rubbish collected, or the carbon emissions saved (or, even, the money contributed to the economy) but it is the worldviews that are opened, and perhaps ultimately changed, and the actions that are taken afterwards that we need to capture and treasure. When looked at in this way, it provides us with another, compelling, reason for festivals to continue to flourish – now and in the future.
This article has been written and published thanks to the generous support of Green Industries SA (GISA) as part of the Festival City Adelaide Climate Action Roadmap project, funded by GISA through its Lead-Educate-Assist-Promote (LEAP) grant program.
Written by Julie Boulton – Sustainability Consultant
While there are no specific guidelines or regulations as to what a sustainable and responsible festival is in Australia, drawing inspiration from what is increasingly required of businesses, festivals can start their sustainability journey by making some changes to how they operate. Actions here include reducing carbon emissions (from the supply of energy, increased energy efficiency, transportation, travel, (of both acts and attendees)), making conscious choices regarding food (where it’s come from, how it’s grown and what will happen to the excess (donating and composting), eliminating waste (by not creating it in the first place, encouraging everyone to bring own bottles, supplying water stations, reusable coffee cups and compostable serving and ensuring people – from everywhere – are valued, have access and are included.
But festivals are not just or only a usual business. Festivals bring together visionaries and vanguards in a specific field or a related theme to celebrate achievements, ideas, culture and traditions. Being full fantastical ideas and bold imagination, often provoking a deep exploration of who we are and what we can be, festivals are also – and have always been – about the future. Sustainability, likewise, is also future focused. The simplest explanation of sustainability is that we must simultaneously meet the needs of the present while ensuring that we don’t affect the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
This link to the future makes festivals an obvious place to explore sustainability in detail. And this demands more than merely completing a checklist of (important) actions which are, perhaps, increasingly pedestrian in the sense that anyone anywhere is also expected to carry out such tasks.
Festivals, by their very nature, lead. And in leading, festivals can – and should – harness their inherent creativity, taking deliberate action by having conversations around sustainability with attendees. While, in some cases, this may seem incompatible with a festival’s specific theme, change – at the scale and speed needed – is not going to happen if we continue to operate in our silos, ie we only talk sustainability at sustainability festivals. Talking to people about things they already know is not what the world needs today. Informing, inspiring, and providing opportunities to act however is what we need. Some amazing examples of going further include Billie Eilish’s eco-village, as part of her 2020 Where do we Go world tour, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres world tour app, part of the band’s efforts to make the tour their most sustainable yet and Australian band, In Hearts Wake’s, documentary, Green Is The New Black, which follows the making of its 2020 album Kaliyuga, which was 100% carbon offset of provides amazing examples of going further). Both Billie Eilish and Coldplay also refer their fans to Global Citizen, an action platform which calls on “global citizens” to take specific actions to achieve the end of extreme poverty around the world.
As a vehicle for holding challenging conversations and for driving new ideas, we need festivals now more than ever to harness their brilliance and actively drive environmental and social change. Perhaps this could be a new metric of success for a festival: it’s not just the rubbish collected, or the carbon emissions saved (or, even, the money contributed to the economy) but it is the worldviews that are opened, and perhaps ultimately changed, and the actions that are taken afterwards that we need to capture and treasure. When looked at in this way, it provides us with another, compelling, reason for festivals to continue to flourish – now and in the future.
This article has been written and published thanks to the generous support of Green Industries SA (GISA) as part of the Festival City Adelaide Climate Action Roadmap project, funded by GISA through its Lead-Educate-Assist-Promote (LEAP) grant program.
