When you’re at a music festival, ears attuned to pulsating drum beats and hypnotic vocals, the last thing on your mind is saving Mother Earth. Yet, a growing number of music festivals across the country – and world – are going to great lengths to go green. From investing in carbon offsets to promoting waste diversion and offering attendees locally sourced food, beer and wine, large-scale music events from Tennessee to California are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact. All this is good and well, but the most sustainable step that music festivals can take has nothing to do with going green.

I recently had the opportunity to think through how the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, a festival that takes place in San Francisco’s historic Golden Gate Park every year, could take their commitment to sustainability to the next level.

The festival is already considered one of the greenest festivals around and boasts a robust sustainability platform. However, the more we dug into the core of the festival’s sustainability mission, the more it became clear that to become truly sustainable (and differentiate itself in the long-term) the music festival needs to think outside the green box.