We Asked a Smart Person How You Can Not Be an Idiot and Help Save the Environment at Music Festivals
We Asked a Smart Person
By Andrea Domanick
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Suns out guns out, y’all—festival season is upon us. That means great tunes, great memories with friends, and wading through fields of discarded water bottles, pizza crusts, and other unmentionable post-party detritus. You’re sweating, you’re exhausted, and you either want to collapse on the spot, or dance until you do. Suddenly those recycling and trash bins you passed earlier seem very, very far away.
“Just this one time,” you tell yourself, loosening your grip on your empty water bottle as it slips onto the trampled grass below. “Next time I’ll find a recycling bin.”
Well, turns out that when 50,000 of your fellow fest-goers follow that logic, it leaves a lot of crap on the ground. Close to 2,000 tons of it, according to estimates from last year’s Glastonbury festival.
But festivals don’t have to be terrible for the environment. Sustainability groups like Global Inheritance, which works with Coachella to promote recycling and eco-awareness, and A Greener Festival, a not-for-profit dedicated to helping festivals adopt eco-friendly practises, have expanded their reach to help promote sustainability and minimize the damage inevitably done when tens of thousands of people gather in one space to party over the course of several days.
