Music Festivals: Think Outside the (Green) Box

Music Festivals: Think Outside the (Green) Box

Triple Pundit

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.

The Myth of the Sleeping Giant

The Myth of the Sleeping Giant

Nayelli Gonzalez
Insights

When I think of the reasons my dad drives a hybrid, fills his groceries in reusable bags, and never leaves the lights on in an empty room, advertising doesn’t exactly come to mind. Marketing and advertising don’t quite explain why, as a child, I grew up eating home-cooked meals made of fresh, unprocessed ingredients; I can still taste the flavors of my mom’s homemade salsa verde enchiladas covered with queso fresco, all whipped up by hand. My parents, who migrated from Mexico City over three decades ago and now proudly call themselves Americans, would never claim to be “green” or “environmentalists.” Yet, some of their habits tell a different story. 

What the outside world sees is sometimes different than what goes on behind closed doors – and that is certainly the case when it comes to Latinos’ relationship with the environment. My parents are representative of millions of Latinos across the United States who are preservationists at core: they hold an inherent respect for nature, are mindful of future generations, and want to live in healthier, cleaner environments. And it is their children and grandchildren, a younger, more social and tech-savvy demographic, who are shaping the next wave of tastes, trends and traditions of this country. Will that future be green? It depends.

Green or not, the future of this nation is brown. The U.S. Latino population is growing at three times the rate of the overall population, and the group’s purchasing power is expected to grow 50 percent in a matter of years. Most businesses know this, but these facts are not entirely reflected in corporate sustainability and marketing efforts.