Let's keep it 100 - from Bonnaroo to EDC to Coachella to Ultra Music Festival, and even local festys right here in our backyard that claim to support the #environment, even going so far as to brand themselves around Nature, namedrop environmental charities and scream "say no to plastics" are being caught with their fat-pocketed pants around their ankles and piles of #plasticwaste to penguin-shuffle through on their way to the bank.
The photo above is from Glastonbury Festival in the U.K; one of the world's worst environmental violators as of late.
The lack of sustainability in the music festival landscape has been a huge subject of discussion recently. Festivals for pure profit that leave the area trashed are on borrowed time and promoters that use Nature to sell tickets but give nothing back to it are being outed by the media as well as their own attendees.
Festival-goers are seeking out newer and greater experiences, and they're looking to the festival producers and promoters to "give the people what they want," but it seems like almost every festival is operating from the same template: the GO BIGGER template. Bigger artists, bigger production, bigger gimmicks, bigger sponsors, bigger ticket prices, bigger hype.... all this equals bigger environmental impact. Bigger isn't always better, and we really should be thinking about our loyalty to those festival producers that think their fans are that shallow.
It's seriously #TimeIVchange.
For Elektrik Fantasy we placed just as much effort into implementing more sustainable practices as we did on our lineup, production and promotion. We partnered with more responsible beverage brands, contracted more eco-conscious food vendors and we're simply just not going down the single-use plastics road at all. Sure, we thought about the risk of making people "uncomfortable" at the thought of a #plasticfreefestival, change isn't easy, but we promise it will be a cool experience. It is possible to still go big without the big F.U. to our planet.