This summer, the Britt Festival asked us to organize their food scrap collection and composting. We, of course, said yes! Sustainably managing food leftovers and reducing our carbon footprint is a growing trend among festivals in the United States and internationally. Outside Lands and Bonnaroo are two examples of music festival giants that run successful waste diversion programs through composting, recycling, and reusing. Last year, Outside Lands diverted 87% of 360,000 lbs of waste. That’s 313,200 lbs diverted! With hard work and a little help from other organizations, the diversion rates can be high.
This year, the Britt Festival is doing the same! Abby McKee, the Britt’s CEO, says, “Britt is so happy to be working with Ashland Community Composting on this important step toward ecological sustainability. Music festivals, as an industry, have a lot of work to do to become less wasteful and more environmentally aware. Musicians and artists are paying attention, and so are our communities! For us at Britt, composting our food waste just makes great sense. It reduces garbage in the landfill and creates fertilizer for our beautiful public park. It’s also been a lot of fun to see how excited our audiences are when I mention our composting program! Folks are really eager to make a difference, and this is a great, easy way for them to do that.
In 2022, the Britt hosted over52,000 spectators! This year, we diverted about 4,000 lbs of food scraps! We kept it out of landfills and kept it local. We turned it into dark, rich, nutritious soil instead! It’s a win-win for everyone involved. This is just the beginning; we look forward to more collaboration and cooperation next festival season.