Last weekend I was at Bonnaroo music and arts festival in Tennessee. A great festival and with 80,000 people also an impressive undertaking. I was there to conduct a survey asking people how 'green' they think the festival is. Managed to collect 300 surveys. That's a lot considering it was boiling hot. Seriously, HOT! Did some filming on Sunday and it looks like my head is about to explode....
Great festival, great music
Like at Lightning in a Bottle people were up for participating in the survey. People really took their time to answer all the questions and quite often started to talk about the green initiatives at Bonnaroo and other festivals. Based on these observations people do care whether a festival has implemented green initiatives or not. That's encouraging! Obviously, the real data comes later this year.
One of the festival attendees I spoke to was collecting cigarette butts in a small plastic bag. She had to hand in a full bag of butts and in return she'd receive a freebie: t-shirt, free meals, or tickets. This is an initiative from Clean Vibes, the company in charge of cleaning the festival site. Loads of people were collecting cigarette butts. Amazing initiative! I did come across these little thing. Another great initiative. Pocket Ashtrays...
preventcigarettelitter.org
After filling out the survey one guy came running after me telling me that too many people throw their trash on the ground. "Can you tell the organisation that more needs to be done about that?" Passionate people, we need more of them...
A tour of the festival grounds by Laura, the sustainability coordinator, really shows that the organisation has sustainability integrated into their management. A great festival with some amazing green initiatives.
The results of the survey will be ready later this year. The online survey is still live so please visit www.eventtutor.com/survey. And help me out!
Meanwhile I'm in the process of moving out of my current apartment. My time in San Francisco, and America, is coming to an end. Back to England for me. But before I go I'm doing one more survey. Next weekend it's San Francisco Pride weekend and I'm conducting a demographic research study. And that's the last survey this year... I think.
Until next time.
Jarno