The greatest impact on the environment comes not from the stage or the catering, but from the transportation of equipment, performers and music lovers to and from the festival site. If festivalgoers were all to go to festivals on public transport or by bicycle the environmental impact of festivals would fall significantly.
The set that used the most energy at last year’s Boomtown Festival consumed around the same amount of energy as just three cars travelling one way between Bruges and Ghent. People wishing to use public transport need to be able to get home once the music has stopped. Some concert organisers are already taking this into account. For example, concerts at the AB concert hall in the centre of Brussels now finish early enough to ensure that concertgoers can get home on public transport if they wish. Meanwhile, some music festivals arrange extra train services for festivalgoers.
When Paradise City invested in the provision of night trains the percentage of festivalgoers travelling to the festival by car reportedly fell from almost 59% (in 2021) to 47% (in 2022). Meanwhile, the percentage of people travelling to and from the festival by train increased from 8% in 2021 to 21% in 2022.
There is of course the issue of the transportation the performers and their equipment to and from the festival. This is something that the organisers of the Paradise City festival already take into account. Paradise City’s Gilles De Decker told VRT News that “We once refused an artist because he absolutely insisted on taking a private jet. This wasn’t an easy decision, because the artist would have attracted a large audience.”
Nevertheless, the festival still does not include artists’ transport when it calculates how far it is to reaching its goal of becoming climate-neutral.
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