published on May 16th, 2008 by Brian Eyster
This was the subject of yesterday’s “Notes from the Planet” email, but I wanted to reprint the bulk of it here since it sets the foundation for what we’re planning to accomplish at this year’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival..
#1: Getting to the Festival
We’re proud to say that Telluride Bluegrass has been 100% wind-powered since 2003. But, emissions from inside the festival grounds amount to a very small percent of the overall footprint. 
Close to 95% of the emissions are created by travel to and from Telluride – by our crews, by our artists, and by festivarians like you. We are tackling this problem two ways: by reducing emissions as much as possible through carpooling, biking, or walking to the festival; then purchasing carbon offsets to neutralize the remaining travel emissions that we can’t reduce - say for instance, that flight from Ireland.
Thanks to assistance from our partners – including New Belgium Brewing’s Team Wonderbike, Renewable Choice Energy, and Clif Bar – we are committed to making the 35th Telluride Bluegrass the World’s 2nd 100% carbon-neutral festival – behind last year’s Telluride Bluegrass, which was the first.
#2: Camping
Many of you will be camping with us for four or more days. If done properly, camping can be carbon-negative with a very low footprint on the planet - no home air conditioning, no lights powered by the grid. 
In past years, sustainable festivarians have used solar panels to power blenders, meticulously composted all kitchen materials, or employed a small hydro-turbine to power a rotating disco ball.
In order to these encourage creative, sustainable campsites, we are working with Chaco and Leave No Trace to hold the 1st Annual How Green is Your Grass? Campsite Challenge. You’ll be able to nominate campsites in each of our campgrounds which we’ll be honoring each day, leading up to the selection of a grand prize-winning campsite which will receive our most coveted tickets: Town Park camping passes for the 2009 festival. Join the “green campsite” discussion now at festivarian.com.
We’ll be doing our part by providing compost containers at all our campgrounds this year. We’re thrilled to announce that this compost can now be processed locally in Telluride!
#3: At the Festival
We’ve made great strides in reducing the waste from the festival including compost, recycling, and the requirement that all vendors use only compostable plates and utensils. But there is much more to be done as we herald in the new age of reuse.
Beginning with water… We’ve been asking ourselves this question: why do we truck in bottled water, manufacture single-use bottles, and dispose of these bottles and boxes, when Telluride’s local water originates from a mountain stream which we can easily filter for all Festivarians to drink? We’ve decided it’s time to address this problem through locally filtered Telluride water and reusable water bottles. This starts with a “bottled water”-free festival stage. To accomplish this, we’ll be giving long-lasting reusable water bottles as gifts to all our artists. With your help we can limit bottled water on the tarps and in the campgrounds - whether through bringing your own reusable bottle from home or purchasing one of ours at the festival. We’ll fill up these bottles for free throughout the festival using filtered water from our water stations.- Reusable bags have finally found their way into our grocery stores, now it’s time they become the norm at our festivals as well. As a first step, we will no longer be offering plastic bags in our Country Store. Reusable bags will be your only option – again, whether you bring your own or use one of our sturdy reusable bags.
- Bring your own reusable… silverware, napkins, plates, vintage beer cups, water bottles, bags, tarps, etc. Find more packing tips at sustainablefestivation.com.
In addition, with the help of our partners Red Bird and Organic Valley, we’re continuing to move toward more locally-grown organic food inside the festival. This year we expect to source a full 75% of our backstage food from organic suppliers.
#4: Beyond the Festival
Finally, we recognize that sustainable festivation is an ever-evolving movement – one with issues that need to be questioned, investigated, tweaked, and shared. To expand this dialog we are launching our new Sustainable Festivation Blog, where we will provide regular updates about our initiatives – the questions we struggle with, what others are doing, and how we can work together to build the sustainable festivation movement. Check out our frequent posts and share your comments at www.SustainableFestivation.com.
Sustainable Festivation is about minimizing our impact on the planet. But it’s also about deepening the Festivarian community. A central gathering place for this Festivarian community is our Festivarian Forum at www.Festivarian.com. With over 1,750 registered members, this online forum is a friendly group eager to welcome in new Festivarians, share time-tested tips, and coordinate ride-shares. Together, we can make this fun, creative, and rewarding for all of us.
In the coming month leading up to our summer solstice gathering in Telluride, we’ll be including Sustainable Festivation Tips in each of our “Notes from the Planet” newsletters to help you plan, pack, and pass the time in these final days leading up to Festival…
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published on May 16th, 2008 by Brian Eyster
I guess we’re off and running… I started typing a response to one of the comments to Steve’s opening blog post - “Welcome to the Sustainable Festivation Blog” - but decided this was worthy of its own post. Here’s Jerry’s comment:
…by some wave of a magic wand, Telluride BF is carbon neutral!!! I don’t think in reality it works that way! You have only created some feel good voodoo; meanwhile thousands of tons of actual CO2 are about to be dumped into the atmosphere as well meaning (mostly) folks drive or fly hundreds to thousands of miles to the most remote place in the US and the big generators on the grounds run 18 hours a day!
We’re making a bold claim, so we’d better start defending it. Well, here goes my first response on this major subject:
Jerry, you’re certainly right to be skeptical about any “carbon neutral” claim - especially when it’s presented in a overly-simplified context without any backing. That’s the purpose of this blog - to hash out these issues in a public forum.
We’ve had heated discussions in the Planet Bluegrass offices all winter about whether this is the right approach. But in the end, we’ve decided that it’s better for us to do something positive now (carbon offsets) rather than wait a couple years for the definitive, correct answer.
It seems to me like there are often 2 problems with carbon neutral claims:
- the scope of the claim (how big is the net you’re throwing over your “carbon neutral” event)
- how you’re neutralizing the carbon.
In our case, we’ve decided to include both the actual festival (including any generators at the festival and the electricity pulled from the grid) and also the emissions created by everyone driving or flying to Telluride. As you rightly point out, these travel emissions are the majority of the emissions, close to 95% of the event’s emissions by our calculations. So for us to claim “carbon neutral” we need to neutralize these travel emissions as well as the emissions at the actual festival grounds.
Let me step back on the second point and explain that we’re not claiming a “carbon zero” event, we’re claiming “carbon neutral.” Some folks question this concept of “neutralizing” the carbon, regardless of how it’s done. I guess you have to accept that if we reduce emissions in one place (creating electricity through wind or sequestering methane on a farm or a landfill), then that can offset for emissions that occur in another place. If you add negative emissions/carbon and positive emissions/carbon, the two can cancel each other out or neutralize the “carbon equation.” Personally, I don’t think that’s a big leap. And it’s certainly the best way to address this right now.
We’ve opted to purchase carbon offsets to neutralize all this carbon. We’re again working with Renewable Choice Energy on this. Last year we purchased Renewable Energy Credits for this offset, but this year we’ve opted for a more direct “carbon offset.” We’ll have more to say about the actual carbon reduction project that we’re funding in the coming weeks. But our aim is to be as transparent as possible about this. We are trying hard to find carbon offsets that are as local to Colorado as possible, but that’s not essential to balance the carbon equation.
Obviously, reducing energy/emissions is the ideal (and we’re trying that through encouraging carpooling, more efficient refrigerator trucks, etc). But there are some emissions that can’t be reduced (flying in from Europe, for example). In those cases, carbon offsets are the only way to neutralize these emissions.
I suppose you could say that people shouldn’t fly all the way to Telluride (or that we shouldn’t hold the festival at all). We’re firmly committed the the belief that the festival is a very worthwhile, meaningful, positive event for a lot of people. An event that can deeply affect people’s lives (including their own sustainability practices). And if you combined that with a thoughtful, open approach to offsetting for many of these emissions (the ones that can’t be “reduced”), I really think we’re doing the right thing. At least in the context of the facts we know today…
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published on May 15th, 2008 by Steve Szymanski
With plastics back in the news again, this came through cyberspace yesterday from our friends at Econscious Market. Here’s the gist (and have a look at their Eco-Times Blog)…
Bisphenol-A and Polycarbonate Plastic
Plastic is hard to avoid, but when it comes to food and drink containers, recent evidence suggests that it’s time to read the fine print. Nalgene bottles, and most plastic baby bottles are made with polycarbonate, a hard and strong plastic that has the potential to leach bisphenol A. Bisphenol A (BPA), which is used to make many hard plastic toys, bottles and food containers, is thought to mimic the hormone estrogen. Recent independent studies link the chemical to breast cancer, obesity, infertility and insulin-resistance in rodents. Health Canada is expected to classify bisphenol A as a dangerous substance later this month. Although the jury is still out on exposure levels and direct effects on humans, it is best to play it safe, especially when it comes to infants and children.
Plastics to Choose: #2, #4 and #5
Ever wonder about the coding system on the bottom of plastic bottles and what they really meant? Well, now’s the time to learn. Most bottles are labeled for recycling purposes, but these codes are helpful in telling us what kinds of plastic was used to manufacture the bottles. Luckily, preventing exposure to polycarbonate plastic bottles is easy if you choose glass, stainless steel, or safer plastic (#2, #4 or #5) bottles.
So what types of plastics are the lesser of evils? #2 HDPE (high-density polyethylene), #4 LDPE (low-density polyethylene) and #5 PP (polypropylene) are typically opaque in color and are not known to contain carcinogens or hormone-disrupting chemicals. The number to stay away from? #7 Polycarbonate.
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published on May 15th, 2008 by Steve Szymanski
When it comes to greening up your event, it’s exciting how much can be accomplished with a little help from others. Over the years, Planet Bluegrass has benefited from companies that have shared both big and little ideas that have changed the way we run our business. Some of those companies are linked to the right of this blog.
We got our first big kick in the pants back in 2002 when we signed on our new beer sponsor, New Belgium Brewing Company, and received the added benefit of their “Sustainability Goddess” by the name of Hillary Mizia. Hillary offered to walk us through the first steps of doing an event audit to better understand the impacts of throwing a music celebration in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
From those discussions, we began to implement changes that have continued each year. And in 2003, we began to incorporate a focus on reusing, reducing, composting and offsetting our energy use into our company mission.
Over the years, a dozen new branches have grown encompassing areas of organics food and body care, local food and water, compostables, sustainable touring practices, leave no trace camping practices, solar and wind and hydro and biofuels and on and on. I invite you to peruse our links page under bluegrass.com/green to find these resources.
Also, here’s a short list of some of our partner sites as well, all of whom embrace the environment as part of the big equation. As for New Belgium Brewery, we just entered our third, three year partnership this month. Along with having their most delicious and energy efficient beer at all of our events they will also be leading a human-powered, carbon-free campaign to greatly increase the use of mankind’s greatest invention… the bicycle.
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published on May 15th, 2008 by Steve Szymanski
Surely this blog is long overdue. Brian has had the blog infrastructure ready for a few weeks now. My excuse? Finding time to write can be umm…hard as is getting in the habit of doing it on a regular basis. But, it’s all about breaking old habits and forming new ones.
And with so much growing interest in reducing our footprint on everything from the energy we use to the food we eat, this blog is now another avenue to pass on the latest info that comes across my desk almost daily. Frequently I try to scan this stuff but just as often I have to file it for later consumption, especially during the festival season. So hopefully those who find the myriad issues surrounding sustainable living interesting reading will scan some of this info and share your thoughts and ideas as well.
And with that, onward we go towards the 2008 festival season. See all of you soon!
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