Can festivals ever be sustainable? Sustainability manager weighs in - The Front Page

A montage of pictures showing the tents and debris left behind after the 2023/2024 Northern Bass music festival in Mangawhai, Northland. Photo / via RNZ

Dancing, DJs and day drinking... a classic summer festival combo.

But hand in hand with the music and partying comes a lesser-known festival stalwart – waste.

Be it beer cans, empty chip pottles or Portaloos events have a habit of creating waste, and in some cases, leaving the whenua in a bad state.

This was laid bare earlier this year when dozens of tents and piles of garbage were abandoned at the Northern Base festival.

Irish event sustainability consultant Josh Brownlow, who works over the summer as an event manager for Clean Event in New Zealand, has led clean-up teams across the globe and told the Herald’s Front Page podcast a big contributor to festival waste was the attitude of those involved.

“A lot of rubbish comes from building the festivals or events, a lot of rubbish comes from taking it all down, and packing it all up. There’s a lot from people consuming mostly food and beverage.”

Brownlow said if there’s camping, the bulk of the waste will come from attendees leaving their camping gear behind.

“Maybe something people aren’t always aware of is the external parts of the events, people going to the event.”

A large part of their job, he said was to monitor the mess people were making en route to a festival and in the carpark.

“Outside of a waste view, Co2, absolutely the main thing by far is travel to events, which is contributing to Co2 emissions from the events. So that’s everybody down to the attendees, all the equipment and the staging and the PA, all of the staff and all of the performers travelling from overseas.”

Listen to the full episode to learn more about how festivals can become more sustainable and whether attendees can help.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. This episode was presented by Katie Harris, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in social issues reporting who joined the Herald in 2020.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.