A Greener Bluegrass Festival
Planet Bluegrass is keenly aware of the pristine environments that serve as the backyard to the festival music performed each year on the Telluride and Lyons stages. Preserving these places is a responsibility that all of us have come to accept as paramount to the continued success of Planet Bluegrass.
Beginning in 2002, Planet Bluegrass made a concerted effort towards reducing the waste produced at our events. We took a comprehensive look at festival impacts and discovered that simply recycling wasn’t all that effective or efficient, especially in Telluride where recyclables have to be trucked 200 miles away. Thanks to meetings with visionary companies like New Belgium Brewing, we decided to implement a festival wide composting program, working with a local composter who’s 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 literally turn back into food once in the soil. These items are now becoming widely used, and offer us an earth-friendly option as compared with plastics and other harmful waste. We also committed to offsetting our carbon emissions as a company, mainly from our use of electricity and gas, by purchasing wind power. In 2004, we became a 100% wind powered company. We now offer organic shirts at our events to reduce pesticide use as well as information on the importance of organic food choices to help our environment. Finally, in an effort to reduce the approximately 93,000,000,000 plastic water bottles that end up in our landfills each year, we offered festivarians the first biodegradable plastic water bottle ever produced at Telluride in 2004 to much excitement.
After two years, and the participation and enthusiastic response from like-minded companies New Belgium Brewing, Whole Foods Markets, NatureWorks, PLA, White Wave Foods, Biota Spring Water, as well as our vendors and festivarians, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the garbage ending up in the landfills at all our festivals.
In Telluride, in 2003, we hauled 387 yards of trash and 257 yards of recycling and compost, which equates to 40% of refuse being diverted from a landfill. This past year, we hauled only 248 yards of trash and 239 yards of recyclables and compost, which means that almost 50% of refuse was diverted from landfills.
We see you, the Festivarians, as an enormous resource in finding new ways to enhance the sustainability of all of our festivals. Please email us [email protected] to continue the dialogue!
