FIB Music Festival Goes Clean & Green This Summer
by Petz Scholtus, Barcelona, Spain on 07.17.08
In Spain, the music festival season is in full swing, after Primavera Sound, Daydream’s tribute to Radiohead and the SOS 4.8 Festival, and we are glad to see that more and more festival organisers make an effort to lower the events’ environmental impacts. This year’s International Festival of Benicàssim (FIB) is no exception. The FIB is Spain’s biggest festival, and a point of reference in the international panorama, with more than 100 artists who come to perform every summer in this small town on the coast between Valencia and Barcelona. This weekend none other than Leonard Cohen, My Bloody Valentine, Mika, Sigur Rós and Róisin Murphy, amongst others, are playing. But now to the social-environmental responsibility the festival has taken on.
On one hand, sustainability has been taken care of by the FIB organisers, and on the other hand, the festival, serving as a social catalyst, is used to raise awareness about social and environmental issues, in collaboration with different NGOs. Amongst those are organisations like Intermon Oxfam, Designers Against AIDS, Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International and Greenpeace. The project is called Limpio y Verde (Clean and Green), and is sponsored by Heineken.
To start with, all of the outdoor advertising campaigns have been carried out using solely recycled paper. Moreover, FIB has decided to compensate all its CO2 emissions for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 editions by planting more than 2.000 trees. Shopping at the festival is also taken care of by offering mainly recycled and recyclable materials, as well as various fair trade products.
Because you can’t get to FIB on public transport, as it is not in the city centre, collaboration with the traffic authorities ensures that the festival has a minimum impact on traffic in Benicàssim itself. FIB has also developed a special programme to share journeys to and from the site as well as to hire bicycle for festival goers.
Waste, one of the big impacts at festivals, is being recycled. As well as implementing a system for separating, collecting and eliminating waste via different recipients for glass, plastic and paper, FIB will encourage the public to take on board this initiative by using reusable cups (an initiative developed in conjunction with Intermon Oxfam), in both restaurant and bar services, thanks to the use of biodegradable and/or recyclable materials. If anyone goes, please let us know what exact solution they came up with.
Last but not least, FIB cares about your ears and hands out earplugs for free to protect people from acoustic contamination.
The FIB festival opens its doors this afternoon and ends on Sunday, July 20th. For more tips on how you can enjoy the festival in a sustainable manner, check out the Fiber Guide To Environmentally-Friendly Behaviour. Thanks Sergio C. for the tip! ::FIB Festival
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