Sustainability at Environmentally Conscious American Festivals

Sustainability at Environmentally Conscious American Festivals

Authors

Zoe Berman

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Abstract

The climate crisis is an ever-increasingly impending threat to our planet. While live music events do not constitute a high percentage of overall global emissions, the pervasive cultural influence of music gives festivals the capacity to influence widespread cultural change. As such, music festivals can ignite behavioral changes that reverberate into stakeholders’ daily lives. Furthermore, large-scale gatherings result in over-consumption of sizable quantities of energy, water and natural resources and production of waste, albeit varying depending on the event’s capacity and geographical location. Many festivals across the globe are working diligently to mitigate their carbon footprint and offer greener and more socially equitable programming to reshape the industry status quo. This research highlights five of those festivals within the United States, providing a snapshot of their current sustainability initiatives and offering suggestions for future improvement and expansion. These festivals represent a breadth of sizes and locations (rural versus urban areas, across five different US states). Additionally, in order to account for all primary stakeholder groups within the festival ecosystem, two organizations making noteworthy strides towards greening artist tours and other external facets of festival operations are outlined herein. The contributions of these seven organizations are analyzed using ten United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deemed applicable to music festivals per the triple-bottom-line framework, which accounts for environmental, social and economic sustainability. The influence of festival size and location are discussed, potential areas of improvement are identified and broader implications are outlined, such as a demonstrated need for further standardization and tangible resources for carbon footprint monitoring and transparent reporting, as well as more developed organization and collaboration under industry coalitions built to unify the live music sector in collective climate activism.

Publication Date

7-1-2023

Campus

Valencia (Spain) Campus

Sustainability at Environmentally Conscious American Festivals

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