[CHALLENGE] Circular Festival Kit

#Circular Festival Kit

Key challenger: Festival4sce, unMonastery
Challenge reviewers: Fest4sce, unMonastery
Themes: Circular guidelines, sustainable design, OSAT, zero waste

##Problem Statement

####What is the big question / problem / change you are trying to make?

Festivals and events produce a huge amount of waste and negative environmental impact: noise pollution, waste and waste management, traffic congestion, environmental erosion, land damage, CO₂ emissions and water wastage.

A ‘circular economy’ event is one that does everything possible to reduce waste and limit unnecessary use of resources and energy simply by planning ahead.

Groups and organisations who want to produce enjoyable, yet sustainable festivals can often find themselves limited by their budget and resources and the little time they have to research into low-carbon, zero waste alternatives.

By sharing of knowledge and resource flows we plan to build a blueprint of how to deploy a festival, enhanced by the circular economy so nothing is wasted during and after the event.

These events often need to guarantee function, additionally they present particularly interesting stress testing opportunities for open source hardware and products. “If it can survive a festival, it can survive most deployments”

##Background
Sustainable development is a value that unMonastery and Fest4sce share, driving ourselves and encouraging others to participate in a zero waste, circular economy existence. The Pre-Festival of Solidarity and Co-operative Economy is entitled theory to practice, focusing on promoting the eco-community based living and exchanging practices, technical know-how and further insights.

During OSCEdays Athens, a team of hackers, artists, researchers and makers will spend 5 days observing and documenting this knowledge exchange, the festival’s existing ecology and collecting data on energy use, food, resources and waste.

Using this information makes it possible to build and test a Circular Economy Festival Kit: a simple to use, open-source guide for producing a sustainable and zero-waste festival based on your event’s needs.

This pilot version 1.0 of the kit will be our primary tool for analysing the Fest4sce, looking through a ‘sustainability’ and ‘circular economy’ lens to survey and road map its future incarnations as a zero waste festival.

##Envisioned Outcomes
Survey templates
Roadmap for existing events/festivals
Tools for data collection and analytics
Documentation of some sustainable infrastructure implementation

##Resources
Boom Festival
Building Man
OuishareFest
Off-grid

1 Like

Sounds great! At the Ouishare-Fest this year they had a “Zero Waste Policy”. This meant, that the flyers for the OSCEdays that Jenni had made did not came in use - because there were no flyers allowed :slight_smile: great idea!

And in Berlin we will do a lot of food-left-over-jams / upcycling-food-session. Like this one for example.

2 Likes

A good example of sustainable/circular festival is the Boom Festival in Portugal, they do some great stuff!! But also have funds for it :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yes, the Umweltfestival in Berlin is waste-free since 1995! They have a “Spülmobil” (a mobile dishwashing bike to avoid one way cups and dishes) for example.

and the OPENiT Festival had with its “City Hacking Concept” also an idea for reducing energy-consumption, noise pollution and waste -> Using existing structures rather then build new and temporary ones.

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I was quite impressed with Ouishare-Fest until the last night when the ‘‘Zero Waste Policy’’ went out the window. Lots of rubbish everywhere :frowning: Up until then though they were doing a great job. It’s good to build upon these examples, like Boom as @unteem suggested and Off-Grid/ Building man too.

Love the mobile dishwasher!