Sustainability and song: B.C. music festivals aim to minimize environmental footprint
Festival organizers say attendees have become more environmentally conscious
B.C. music festivals attract thousands of people each year. With those crowds come garbage, single-use plastics, vehicle emissions and lots of foot traffic.
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival, now in its 42nd year, and the Squamish Constellation Festival, in its inaugural year, are both aiming to be zero-waste events. Both festivals take place in July.
Laurie-Ann Goodwin, executive director of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, says the three-day Jericho Beach event has had an environmental volunteer committee for all 41 previous festivals.
"It started with trying to ensure that the park that we were in was left in good shape. And so it began with cleaning up with garbage bags and maybe with some recyclable bottles," Goodwin told Stephen Quinn, host of The Early Edition.
"It's really evolved into this aim for zero waste with really complex zero-waste stations," said Goodwin.
Learning from the past
Tamara Stanners, co-founder of the Squamish Constellation Festival in Squamish, says she expects the new event's green efforts to be successful in the community located 64 kilometres north of Vancouver. Attitudes toward the environment have changed, she says, since the days of the Squamish Valley Music Festival which is no longer in operation.
One year the festival had camping and attendees left not only garbage behind, but tents and sleeping bags as well.
"It was shocking to the organizers and the whole community ... We couldn't believe that people would even think that in any place it would be okay to leave all of that behind," said Stanners.
"I think it was just about eight years before the evolution of consciousness ... I don't think that you'd ever see that at a festival [now]."
Eliminating single-use plastics
On Monday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will ban single-use plastics — which could include bags, straws and cutlery — as early as 2021. Stanners says this is a good step forward for the country.
The Constellation Festival does not allow single-use plastics, and attendees are encouraged to bring a reusable bottle. All vendors on-site will use recyclable utensils and containers, she says
However, some plastics are unavoidable, says Goodwin. The Folk Music Festival makes 10,000 plates of food over the course of three days.
"It does happen that some of the food that we buy is packaged in such a way that single-use plastic can happen. And so it really is a manufacturing issue. And so we do our best to not buy those kind of things, but we can't always avoid it," said Goodwin.
Carbon dioxide emissions
Goodwin and Stanners say they have put measures in place to decrease carbon dioxide emissions from vehicle and air travel.
"One of the cool things about the festival community at large is that we share artists. So if an artist is coming out West, other festivals can share that artist within the radius clause," Goodwin said.
She says the Folk Festival encourages concert-goers to bike or take transit to the site. Car-share program Evo will provide valet service in hybrid vehicles.
Constellation will be teaming up with the Squamish Connector which offers round-trip shuttle service from downtown Vancouver to Squamish.
Listen to the full interview here:
With files from The Early Edition.