With your help, Planet Bluegrass festivals continue to be a model of Sustainable Festivation*. Check out the sustainability programs built into the fabric of our festivals and see what new things we are up to in the “News and Updates” section.
*SUSTAINABLE FESTIVATION (n): Sustainable Festivation (n) is the act of creating a conscious, socially responsible community centered around a love of music, unwavering respect for the planet, an appreciation of the human experience, and thoughtful consideration of our intertwined futures.
If you are reading this, you have arrived at Planet Bluegrass, a destination that is in and of itself otherworldly. Where singing is the native tongue, tie-dye and river shoes are the customary dress code, and the Festivarian Bill of Rights is the law of the land. The banjo rules, but mostly because it’s the loudest. Nestled within these river encased cliffs it’s sometimes hard to imagine our blissful bluegrass Planet is connected to the larger one, one that is currently suffering from the release of too much carbon dioxide into its atmosphere.
That being said, we wholeheartedly believe that gathering together as we do is not only good for our souls, but in many ways, it’s also good for the environment.
For example, while Festivating the typical Folks Festivarian emits less carbon than they would during their normal daily activities. While it’s true that in Festivation we may overindulge in late-night songwriting sessions, campground shenanigans, tarp hangs, and Festivale (have you tried it?), it also means that we forgo our normal daily commutes, use less energy while camping, conserve water, and, thanks to the efforts of our compost crew and buy-in from our food vendors, collectively divert more waste into recycle and compost streams!
So what is the carbon impact of Festivating?
It’s a complex problem to analyze and one that we’ve been contemplating and refining over the past 15 years using a massive in-house spreadsheet created with the help of expert consultants in the field. Last year we not only estimated and purchased carbon offsets for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival footprint (a voluntary commitment that we’ve made and kept since 2007!), but also RockyGrass and Folks Festival.
This means that we track all of the carbon released by the Festivals which includes YOUR unique Festivarian Footprints. Dip your feet in the water and let that soak in. Yes, you heard right: your Festivarian travel to and from Lyons creates “Scope 3 Emissions” which, along with the travel of artists, vendors, and staff, are included in the overall Festival calculations.
Check out our 2022 Festival Footprint (Telluride, RockyGrass, & Folks Festival) to see how it all adds up. Can you see what’s at the heart of the issue (or should we say “sole”…)?
If you said Festivarian Travel, you nailed it!
Festivarian Footprint Survey
This year, to help us better track emissions, we’ve partnered up with Aclymate, a colorado-based company that offers an all-in-one platform that helps small businesses track emissions, set goals, report, and purchase carbon offsets through their easy and affordable software. With their expertise we have already felt a huge number-crunching burden lifted off of our plates (which are reusable of course!).
In conjunction with Aclymate, we’ve developed the first-in-the-nation Festivarian survey that allows you to calculate your individual Festivarian Footprint taking into account your travel, lodging, and potential avoided emissions from camping, adjusting your thermostat, and not driving daily. It also gives you the opportunity to offset your own emissions by investing in one of the four carbon offset projects that we’ve selected.
Carbon Offset Projects
Last year Planet Bluegrass invested in two different carbon offset projects: Nepal High-Efficiency Cookstoves & China Hebei Province Wind Farm. Both projects are classified as emission avoidance projects and are third party verified. The Nepal High-Efficiency Cookstoves project, in particular, spoke to us because it promotes women empowerment through the increased adoption of fuel-efficient cookstoves.
Composting has always been a critical part of Sustainable Festivation. That’s because it’s the only way to keep certain parts of our waste stream out of the landfill-namely food scraps and the certified compostable products used in places where reusable alternatives aren’t an option. But just when we had our dedicated Sustainable Festivarians (you!) fully trained, Boulder County and others began to encounter a composting conundrum.
Did you know that the US puts more food in landfills than any other single material? And when that food breaks down in landfills it creates methane–a greenhouse gas more than 80 times worse than CO2 on a short term basis?
We’ve been lucky in Lyons and Telluride to have access to composters willing to accept post-consumer food scraps and packaging. Most composters in the US only accept yard trimmings, though that is starting to change as the awareness of the food in landfill and climate connection grows. One reason so many composters only accept yard trimmings is because accepting food scraps and compostable packaging comes with a significant risk–contamination from non-compostable materials.
There are a lot of similarities between composting and recycling, but there is one really important difference. While most recycling systems are specifically designed to separate materials like plastics, aluminum, glass, paper and non-recyclable items, sorting technology for composting is still in its infancy. To make matters worse, contamination from non-compostable materials constitutes a much bigger risk for composters than non-recyclable material does for recyclers.
This spring, the primary composter serving the Denver-Boulder area was forced to temporarily suspend the acceptance of certified compostable products, citing contamination from non-compostable items like conventional plastic and glass.
Since April, we’ve been working with our long-time partner, Eco-Products, on a solution that would enable the events in Lyons to continue collecting compostable products as we’ve done in the past. We were able to find a site in Colorado Springs that will accept our compost based on our (and your) excellent track record of creating a clean compost stream. It is not an ideal solution because of the extra miles to haul it and the extra money and time that it will take, however after our analysis it was still the least carbon intensive solution.
There is a lot to learn here for all of us. Access to composting can be taken away if we don’t educate ourselves and do everything we can to keep non-compostable materials out of compost bins.
As much as it pains us to say it, there is truth to the phrase “When in doubt, throw it out” for composting. If you are unsure if your item is compostable or not, please don’t put it in the compost bin. Please note that all serving items from our vendors are certified compostable! For this year, to ensure that our compost stream is uncontaminated we will not be placing compost bins in the campgrounds. Campers can bring their compost into the festival grounds where the bins are monitored and our staff will assist you in composting them. Thank you for your continued Sustainable Festivation efforts!
Planet Bluegrass gratefully received funds through the 2023 Telluride Green Grant Program to replace twenty 500W Halogen flood light bulbs used to light the Festival grounds to less energy intensive 80W LED bulbs. The new bulbs use 84% less energy resulting in a net energy saving of 403.2kWhrs each festival. Over a ten year period this avoids 2.1 MT of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) equivalent from being released into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions produced by driving an average gasoline-powered car 5,409 miles.
The grant was administered by EcoAction Partners, one of our trusted local partners, who is dedicated to finding sustainable solutions for communities in the northern San Juan Mountain region.
Recognizing that local action can spark change and have a global impact, EcoAction Partners and the Sneffels Energy Board have pioneered a Climate Action Plan (CAP) to support the regional long-term goal of a 90% emissions reduction by 2050.
Since its formation in 1988, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, PBC (d/b/a “Planet Bluegrass”) has been redefining the musical festival by creating exceptional experiences that strengthen community while striving to reduce its environmental impact.
Click here to read our 2022 Planet Bluegrass Annual Impact Report to see how we carry out our mission.
Recently, we’ve been reflecting on what it means to be sustainable with a new perspective. What’s become clear is the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Against the backdrop of current events, we have sadly seen other festivals and venues not able to keep their doors open and missions intact. It was painful to cancel all of our festivals in 2020. Thankfully, in 2021, we were incredibly fortunate to receive the Colorado Arts Relief Grant, which helped sustain us through a festival season at reduced capacity. We are forever grateful for our State Representatives being such dedicated advocates for the arts.
“The grant allowed us to bring music back to the Festivarians around the state and bring artists to the stage that hadn’t been able to play,” notes Craig Ferguson. “It was powerful to feel the impact the festivals have on so many different people. It was a good reminder that what we do is meaningful.”
Environmental sustainability has always been woven with intention into the fabric of our festivals. Many of the actions that Planet Bluegrass takes are voluntary. Thanks to a culture we call “Sustainable Festivation,” each Festivarian remains an empowered partner in our quest to lessen impacts. Steve Szymanski has championed this effort over the past twenty years, and last month accepted Folk Alliance International’s “Clearwater Award” on behalf of our environmental stewardship and leadership in the music festival industry. Steve says, “It feels like a new beginning in a lot of ways, and I truly hope this inspires new efforts to meet today’s challenges.”
While there’s no denying that our natural environment is stressed like never before, the sustainability of our communities and our very social fabric face new challenges as well.
We recognize that our society is suffering from polarization, and our team has been engaging in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training to understand how to be better community members and advocates. The festival experience is a unique opportunity to draw people together under the common umbrella of love for music. In that light, we encourage you to take time to talk with your fellow Festivarians about things that matter. By listening closely and engaging in meaningful conversation, we hope you find an understanding and create a harmony all your own.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
— Anonymous
Now is here! Planet Bluegrass is excited to partner with Seas of Trees, a local nonprofit tree planting organization, to create a large demonstration forest in Telluride this summer. Seas of Trees was founded in 2020 by a local high school junior, Ayla Kanow, and her family with the mission to educate youth planters about climate change, environmental stewardship, and carbon sequestration. Already the organization has planted 2,000 sapling trees locally, another 1,500 abroad, and is branching out to take on their largest project yet.
The 2,000 tree demonstration forest consists of local species including native Quaking aspen, Blue spruce, Douglas fir, Lodgepole, and Ponderosa pine. The forest will be taking root on private property on the sunny side of Aldasoro adjacent to the airport where it will have access to water and a fence system to keep the resident Elk from grazing on the tender saplings in their first few years.
Planet Bluegrass, the Town of Telluride, San Miguel County, and the Telluride Foundation have all contributed to the purchase of the trees and supplies as well as a long-term maintenance plan to ensure the forest’s success.
“We don’t see the project as just about tree planting. We see it as tree-growing,” notes Natalie Fijalkowski, Co-owner of Telluride Arborist, who is donating the creation of a permaculture design to nurture the forest until it is established.
“Forests everywhere are in jeopardy and here in Telluride sudden aspen decline (SAD), the invasive bark beetle, wildfires, and drought significantly threaten our forests,” said Ayla’s mom and Board President, Joanna Kanow. “Even though it looks like you are surrounded by trees everywhere, if you look closer, the forests need our help.”
Planting has begun and Seas of Trees is looking for volunteers. If you want to take climate action and learn about reforestation, Planet Bluegrass will be taking a group up to the forest to get their hands in the dirt and plant some trees during the festival. Find out more by visiting the Seas of Trees table in Harmony Greene.
At maturity a single tree will remove 48 lbs of amount of carbon dioxide from the air. The demonstration forest is projected to sequester 48 tons over its lifetime. It is more important than ever to invest in the now, and in 20 years, at the 69th Telluride Festival, we will be grateful we did!
Our waste diversion rate for 2022 was almost 60% across all of our festivals. That means that of all the waste produced at our festivals, only 40% typically ends up in a landfill. The average recycling rate for Colorado in 2021 was only 16% (Eco-Cycle & CoPrig). We’re ahead of the curve, but we’re not stopping there.
Reduce. REUSE. Recycle. Reducing and reusing is a higher priority than recycling. This is why we have been offering collectable REUSABLE long-lasting plastic cups with discounted refills for decades and have been running a reusable dish program at our festival grounds in Lyons, CO since 2016.
Since 2007, Planet Bluegrass has committed to voluntarily calculate and offset the Telluride Bluegrass Festival’s carbon footprint (which accounts for over 80% of the total Planetary impact of our 3 major festivals) by investing in carbon offsets. These are meaningful, measurable projects that either pull greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere or prevent them from ending up there.
PB has partnered with Aclymate, a local Colorado that offers an all-in-one plateform to help small business track emissions and purchase offsets, to develop software to estimate the carbon impact of events. Festivarians were asked to participate in a travel survey and purchase offsets for their travel.
PB along with the Town of Telluride, San Miguel County and the Telluride Foundation contributed to planed a 2,000 tree demonstration forest that at maturity will remove 48 tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Folk Alliance International’s “Clearwater Award” is given out annually to a festival that prioritizes environmental stewardship and demonstrates public leadership in sustainable event production.
We didn’t want to see our leftover catering go to waste, so we searched for a solution. In the first two years, we donated over 3000 pounds of food!
We pledged to reduce our reliance on single-use products. We invested in a program to wash plates made from bamboo, corn starch and sugar cane onsite at the festivals.
We chose to source our carbon offsets from a local Larimer County Landfill, just north of our headquarters in Lyons, Colorado. We purchased 2,496 metric tons of carbon offsets from this project.
We took the next step toward “zero-waste” by encouraging Festivarians to pack out everything that could not be recycled or composted.
We provided an alternative to bottled water as usual by offering free filtered water at the festival to help encourage our festival community to kick the bottled water habit.
We began neutralizing 100% of emissions caused by festival travel, electricity, diesel and gas by investing in innovative carbon reduction projects.
BIOTA was the World’s first bottled spring water/beverage packaged in a Planet Friendly™ commercially compostable plastic bottle. Our bottle was manufactured from a 100% renewable resource, corn, instead of oil.
We made the commitment to offset our footprint and invested in carbon offsets and renewable energy credits (REC’s) to mitigate the carbon dioxide (CO2) created by our electricity, diesel and gas consumption.
We worked with a local composter whose farm was located only 16 miles from the festival site. That led us to research compostable materials such as corn resin cups, plates and utensils that would turn back into food in the soil.
