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The live shows industry has evolved and every time there are more concerts and festivals that take into account environmentally friendly practices, hopefully, soon there will be zero-waste music events, and organizers can help the planet with no need of changing the way we enjoy these events and our favourite artists.
In this post, I will share an example of a concert I attended last year (and maybe a lot of Local Guides too), I am talking about Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour, in 2019 Coldplay did not go on tour due to concerns about making a sustainable tour, a few years later it was possible thanks to the implementation of many measures to do it in the most environmentally friendly way, like:
The LED wristbands used during their tour were made from plant-based compostable materials, after the show people return them to be used in the next shows and reduce wristband production by 80%, also the use of fireworks was one of the most controversial topics about the tour, as they use pyro on different moments of the show and they announced they will be using a “new generation of sustainable pyrotechnics that have less explosive charge and new formulas that greatly reduce or eliminate harmful chemicals”.
To power a show like this Coldplay used different renewable energy sources like solar, biofuels and kinetic energy produced by fans with kinetic floor areas and bikes.
10% of the earnings of ticket sales were given to different organizations and projects like Climeworks, Global tech advocates, ClientEarth, Global Citizen, One Tree Planted, The Ocean Cleanup Seafields and Sea Shepherds just to name a few.
Of course, all of these actions and partnerships with nonprofits sound like a perfect plan to have an eco-friendly event but we, as attendees can do small actions that being done by thousands of us in the crowd can have a huge impact, here are some we can do if you are attending a concert or music festival:
Travel
According to BBC audience travel is responsible for approximately 33% of the carbon footprint of a live music tour, that is something to keep in mind next time you go to a concert or festival, instead of using your car you can use public transport, carpool (remember you can use Google Maps eco-friendly routes if available) and one of the best options is to use festival shuttles, I have used this option to attend festivals traveling from another city.
If you downloaded Coldplay’s app and added some information about the venue you were attending, it encouraged people to arrive at the venue using public transport and rated your journey, mine was green!
The 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
A lot of festivals and events offer free water so take your reusable water bottle or pouch and avoid buying single use plastic bottles. I would like to take my Guiding Stars bottle to festivals but metallic bottles are forbidden objects instead I take a water pouch to all festivals and concerts I go to.
There are really cool ideas to help the environment, one example is Heineken’s beer cups are made from a bioplastic made of 25% barley husk, a great way of reusing materials if you ask me and we can take it further by using using just one cup, ask staff to refill it instead of using a new one (it’s great to see more people doing this every time), please don’t be that guy that at the end of the day has a tower of plastic cups and throws them everywhere but the recycling bin.
Extra R for Local Guides: Review!
As Local Guides we can share our experience and include useful information about green practices, you can include details if a place is water and energy efficient, reduces waste or if it collects recycling materials, all of these apply to venues and don’t forget that there is a festival category on Google Maps.
Have you seen any of these green practices at a concert or music festival? Do you have any other green tips for attending a music event?
Thanks for reading, keep enjoying music and saving the planet (one beer cup at a time), I would like to finish my post with a phrase I saw a couple of years ago:
“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”
Happy Earth Day!
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