Wage war on concert-generated waste this summer and BYOC (bring your own container)
Summer is the season for many things we outdoor-lovers enjoy. It’s the time of year when the smell of BBQ is always in the air, we set off for weekend-long camping trips in the mountains, and attend party outdoor gatherings, be it weddings, baby showers, or back-yard soirees. In a lot of places, it’s also concert and music festival season, which are a ton of fun for us, but unfortunately, wreak havoc on the environment with all the plastic waste that’s left behind.
There’s no better accessory for your next outdoor concert or festival than a reusable, collapsible, travel-ready, eco-friendly water bottle, cup or pint. Get one and take it with you into the next venue you visit. Every time you use it, you save a cup from ending up in a landfill or a bottle from ending up in our oceans.
Concerts: Fun for you, not so much for planet earth
Concert season is anxiously awaited by many. It certainly is in Bend, Oregon, the homebase of HYDAWAY. The concerts hosted at Hayden Homes Amphitheater are well underway as we near the end of August, and while we are a fairly eco-responsible town, there’s always a surprising number of plastic cups and trash left behind at every show. This problem isn’t unique to Bend, or even the U.S. The Glastonbury Festival in England has been described as “apocalyptic” after the 5-day event ended several years ago, with concert attendees leaving behind 1,800 tons of trash in the form of plastic bottles, beverage cups, and abandoned camp gear.
Similarly, Coachella–one of the highest attended music festivals in the U.S.–generates an estimated 107 tons of waste each day. Despite Coachella’s recycling campaign (TRASHed) that gives artists the chance to paint an original design on a 65-gallon recycle bin, and their placement throughout the grounds, only 20% of the waste gets recycled. One look at the ground after a day of festival-revelry shows that the majority of people are not only discarding their trash irresponsibly, they aren’t conscious of their single-use plastic use in the first place. Combined, this creates a massive negative environmental impact.
In the U.S. alone, festival-goers produce 53,000 tons of trash every year. In the U.K., that number is 23,500 tons. These are statistics from two of the world’s countries; imagine how much cumulative trash is produced from festival-goers around the world? It’s a frightening thought…
Wage war on single-use plastic at outdoor concerts & festivals
On a normal day, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommend that women should drink 2.7 liters (91 ounces) and men should drink 3.7 liters (125 ounces ). At an outdoor event in the heat of summer, you’ll definitely need to up your fluid intake above and beyond the recommendations. Even if you stick within the “normal day” guidelines, that still means buying more than five 16-ounce bottles for a woman and close to eight 12-ounce bottles for a man. Now imagine how many water bottles that would mean for a field full of festival-goers in 90 F-100F+ heat.
Before you declare a strike on the next music festival or concert, hear this! Musicians, festivals, and venues are starting to take notice of the critical levels of plastic produced at their shows, and to combat this, are teaming up with awesome organizations like REVERB to embrace plastic-free or plastic-reduced events.
BYOC – Bring Your Own Container – to your next musical event
There are ways that you can help, too. You can reduce your plastic footprint and still get out and enjoy one of your favorite summer pastimes, and it doesn’t mean sacrificing hydration or health to do it.
Using provided recycle bins at event venues is a start, but remember, the plastic used to make Solo cups and other single-use plastic isn’t so easy to recycle. And all that water you need to drink to stay safely hydrated during summer concerts? That’s several bottles of single-use plastic per person that are purchased, drank, and discarded within minutes. As always, the best bet is not just to reduce, or even recycle–it’s to reuse your own brought-from-home vessel.
Whether you’re a local living it up in the summer months or in town for a concert or music festival, take a few extra moments to do your small part for the hosting venue, city, and the planet’s health. Bring your own container (BYOC), be it a HYDAWAY collapsible water bottle or collapsible cup and give it to the bartender or vendor when you place an order for your beverage of choice. By reusing the same bottle or cup every time, you’ll save a lot of plastic, and that can really add up.