Renewable Island: Fiestas ‘without footprints’ as entertainers go green
Singer Songwriter Mick Flannery, local musician Christy Barry and musician Sharon Shannon pictured at Doonagore, Doolin, launching the 3rd Doolin Folk Festival.
Ireland’s first carbon-neutral music festival took place earlier this month at Doolin, Co Clare.
Advertised as ‘the festival without the footprint’, it was centred around the Hotel Doolin – the first carbon-neutral hotel in the country and winner of Ireland’s Greenest Business at the Green Awards 2022.
Home to the Doolin Folk Festival, Hedge School Doolin, The Attic Live Venue and to Doolin Arts, Hotel Doolin's mission is “to bring people together to make magic memories in Ireland’s biggest small hotel.” Doolin Arts is Hotel Doolin’s non-profit vehicle for supporting the arts in North Clare, with events, including the Doolin Folk Festival, run on a non-profit basis ensuring that 100% of the ticket revenue goes directly to artists, crew and the delivery of the festival.
Regular attendees at music festivals at home and abroad, the team at Hotel Doolin have always wanted to ensure that the Doolin Folk Festival was a sustainable festival, with a positive impact on the environment and the arts community and the first carbon-neutral music festival in the country.
“If a small festival like us can achieve carbon neutrality and pay a fair rate to performers then there is no reason the bigger festivals, with all their resources and profit generated, cannot strive to do the same.”
CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB
There was no single-use or plastic packaging or products in use at this year’s festival, no printed programmes, wrist bands were compostable and all energy used was from renewable sources.
In addition, the organisers planted 500 native trees onsite with support from hometree.ie ahead of the festival to add to the 700 already planted earlier in the year.
The Terraforma festival in Milan puts in place a waste management programme in addition to site work is carried out by local young architects to build a space made from sustainable materials.
The DGTL festival in Amsterdam is guided by a manifesto centred around a ‘sustainable big three’: reusable cups, a smart energy plan and a meat-free menu.
The festival is presented as an opportunity to learn, creating a mini-city within an abandoned shipyard in which forward-focussed eco-design of the future can be tested out.
The Shambala festival in Northamptonshire, UK is advertised as ‘Adventures in Utopia, with the entire festival powered by 100% renewable energy, recycling exchanges and a meat and fish-free menu.
The EDP Cool Jazz gathering in Lisbon is sponsored by EDP, Europe’s largest electricity provider, and puts much into proving its green-minded credentials. The company pledges to completely neutralise the carbon footprint of the event, including the travel of all artists.
Northside at Aarhus in Denmark has a goal to be “the world’s most green and sustainable cultural event”. Similar to Terraforma, Northside follows each annual gathering with a report considering ways that it can continue pushing boundaries in festival management for a green-hungry age.
At the festival itself, “Trash Talkers” help sort your rubbish into six sections; the food is 100% organic; and there are no car parks on site.
Vision: 2025 is a shared vision for a sustainable outdoor events industry, and was conceived as part of ‘The Show Must Go On’ report, a festival industry response to the 2015 global climate change talks in Paris.
The report outlined the environmental impacts of the festival industry and aimed to provide a robust basis for an industry-wide action. The report launched the Vision: 2025 pledge to bring together festivals that wish to take action to create a sustainable future.
By 2020, over 100 events had pledged to follow the Vision: 2025 strategy to create more sustainable events. Powerful Thinking is a ‘think-do tank’ which brings together festivals, suppliers and environmental organisations to explore ways to reduce the costs and carbon through increased efficiency and alternatives, and share findings to promote lower carbon industry.
It aims to provide clear guidance and resources to festival organisers about approaches to sustainable power and to drive a market for renewable energy supply at festivals, understanding and accounting for the business and cost restraints.
Powerful Thinking Chair, Tim Benson, commented on how festivals can adapt organic waste into their circular economy models.
“In 2019, Worthy Farm, home to Glastonbury Festival, commissioned Biogest to build a 125kW anaerobic digestion plant on their site, which produces energy from cow manure and exports this back into the grid. Plans for using this biomass solution to supplement the festival’s show power were already being considered, before the untimely intervention of the Corona virus.
“Yet for established festivals that have long-term relationships with their landowners, these kinds of projects could benefit both parties through a jointly funded venture. And of course, less food waste to landfill will reduce the volume of methane emitted into the atmosphere, which can only be a good thing as it has five times the warming potential of CO2.”
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