When Guster took the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheater in July 2021, it was a triumphant return after months of lockdown amid a pandemic that forced live music into hiatus. As the opening bars of “Do You Love Me” rang out, fans started to sing along in a pure expression of joy, knowing that they were taking part in history.
This Guster concert was the first to be held at the venue as a climate-positive event. This concert was a small step in the right direction towards addressing the rapidly heating planet. It also showed how music festivals can lead the way towards environmentalalism. As music festivals are slowly returning, there is an argument to be made that they shouldn’t return in the form we once knew. Instead, live music’s triumphant return should hinge on a more concerted (pun intended!) Music should be more eco-conscious.
For example, the Guster concert felt and looked like a regular concert. REVERB, a Guster member and Lauren Sullivan’s wife, was funded by $1 per ticket. In order to reduce the environmental impact of their concerts, the group partners with festivals and venues, as well musicians such as Pink, Billie Eilish and Dave Matthews Band.
REVERB works to make concerts and tours climate positive by offsetting a show’s entire carbon footprint (including fan, band, crew travel, accommodations, energy use at the venue, etc.). They support vetted projects that will reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases by significantly more than the concert produced, thus making it climate friendly. They also lead the effort to encourage venues to make small environmental changes, such as switching from plastic straws to paper and encouraging refillable water bottles. “We’ve eliminated over four million single-use plastic water bottles just through that program,” Gardner says. There are more festivals and venues joining the band as it focuses on environmental issues. “We’re seeing a lot more interest from venues and promoters than ever before,” He said.
It’s not just REVERB working towards a sustainable revolution in the music world, of course. Since 2002, Norway’s Øya Festival has set out to be one of the world’s greenest events. “For us, this means finding sustainable solutions for waste, food, transportation, energy, and the things we buy – from toilet paper to power grids,” Claes Osen, the festival’s founder, said. “We want our festival to contribute to a sustainable future – and work towards a festival that is renewable, plant-based, and circular.” Some of the steps include creating a carbon-free construction site, removing single-use plastics, encouraging people to walk, bike, or use public transport, mandating food packaging to be compostable, and hand-sorting all waste to ensure that there is as much recyclable material as possible. “By sorting as much as possible instead of throwing everything as waste, we have saved 14,000 kg CO2,” Olsen says. “This corresponds to emissions from 11 cars for an entire year.”
What Øya does at a small scale (it’s capped at 20,000 attendees), San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival does with a capacity of 80,000. “Our overall goal at Outside Lands is to be the industry leader in large-scale event sustainability,” says Morgan Fitzgibbons, Director of Sustainability and Community Engagement of Outside Lands. It means working to reduce carbon emissions, eliminate single-use plastic and most importantly, inspiring fans to share the message about environmental responsibility. “We feel that maximizing our positive cultural impact is every bit as important as minimizing our waste during our event,” says Fitzgibbons.
Jan Portheine was one such fan who felt moved to encourage change. He came up with the idea for his company after seeing “a graveyard of plastic tents” left in the wake of a festival. “That’s where he started thinking that a cardboard sleeping tent, which is fully recyclable, could solve the problem,” Sofie Van Eeden is KarTent’s marketing manager. The company now crafts temporary cardboard shelters that serve as an easy and fully recyclable option for festival attendees who don’t want to lug a tent from, say, Nevada to the Bonnaroo grounds. Instead, festival organizers can offer KarTent as an affordable, environmentally-friendly option made from 73% recycled cardboard that can be turned back into paper when the festival is over.
FestivalChair is another company that has made innovative steps towards creating environmentally-friendly products. This versatile stool can support up to 440 pounds. It’s stylish and made of FSC certified cardboard, much of which comes from recycled sources. While it’s designed to be quickly folded up and reused, it is also completely recyclable, allowing for easy, sustainable seating options for temporary festivals that don’t want to leave a permanent mark on the planet.
These are just two examples that show how concert venues and festivals can switch to renewables in place of plastics. Artists and promoters looking for more ways to help improve sustainability efforts can team up with an organization like REVERB to help make touring and festivals more mindful, while connecting with fans. “The fans are so crucial to pushing sustainability at events,” says Outside Lands’ Fitzgibbons. “We can create the best-laid plans, but unless fans bring a conscientious attitude, whether by bringing their own water bottle, or taking a moment at the waste bins to make sure they are sorting their trash properly, then it all kind of falls apart.”
Fans are the secret to making these environmental pushes effective, and because they’re already engaged on a certain level just by being at the festival, it’s an excellent opportunity to push for real change. As Fitzgibbons says, “We really hope that the effort we put in at the event reverberates out and affects the choices fans make in their everyday lives.”
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