With your help, the Planet Bluegrass festivals continue to be models of Sustainable Festivation*. As we continue to broaden the scope of our efforts, here are a few of our recent achievements.
To learn more about Sustainable Festivation at each of our festivals: Telluride Bluegrass | RockyGrass | Folks Festival
*SUSTAINABLE FESTIVATION (n): The act of creating a conscious community centered around a love of music and respect for the planet.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. What many people don’t realize, is this common saying is a hierarchy: reducing our consumption is a higher priority than recycling what has been consumed. This is why we introduced a reusable plate program to our Lyons festivals in 2016.
In December of 2015, Planet Bluegrass joined nearly 2,000 other for-profit companies worldwide in a common goal: using business as a force for good. After successfully completing a rigorous examination of our verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability, we became a certified B Corporation™.
Since 2016, we have achieved average diversion rates of at least 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 national average recycling rate was about 35% in 2014, according to the EPA. We’re ahead of the curve, but we’re not stopping there.
We are offsetting 100% of the emissions created by the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, including travel to and from Telluride - and we have been doing so since 2007. This is our most significant step to-date towards neutralizing the impacts of our events.
Sustainable Festivation means giving back to the Earth, but it also means giving back to our beloved communities! Since 2017, we have partnered with local organizations to donate leftover food to those in need.
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.
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.
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 began neutralizing 100% of emissions caused by festival travel, electricity, diesel and gas by investing in innovative carbon reduction projects.
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 took the next step toward “zero-waste” by encouraging Festivarians to pack out everything that could not be recycled or composted.
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 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 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!
