June 23, 2010 - Sasquatch Festival Digs Green Roots Further

If you call Vancouver, Seattle or Portland home (or love really long road trips like us) and love music - namely indie - then the end of May should be on your annual calendar of adventures.

Sasquatch festival stakes its annual claim in an incredible scenic setting in the mountains roughly three hours east of Seattle. While the festival itself is striving to be as green as possible and continuously lessen its eco-footprint, just the beauty of the surrounding area begs people to take notice of nature.

The three-day festival which ran from May 29-31 featured over 100 artists including Vampire Weekend, Pavement, Public Enemy, They Might Be Giants, My Morning Jacket, Massive Attack, The Hold Steady, Minus The Bear, Camera Obscura and many others.

Since the first year of the festival 8 years ago, Sasquatch has aimed its sights on being a mega-festival with deep green roots. So what makes it green other than recycling bins and carbon-offset tickets? Some ideas are unique to Sasquatch, for example if you demonstrate that you car-pooled to the event you'll be entered into a competition for a variety of prizes. Also, the entire festival was 100% wind powered and Carbon Harmony has pledged to offset 125% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced during the festival.  By offsetting more GHG emissions than the festival produces, the result is a net reduction in the amount of GHG in the atmosphere, which provides a positive effect on our climate.

Sasquatch packs their website with great information and insight and fully acknowledges that such a large gathering of people suggests inherent energy waste but they tout that for them the opposite is true:

Carbon Harmony funds projects that reduce GHG on dairy farms in the Pacific Northwest. The collection of methane and combustion projects convert methane gas from animal waste into clean electricity. This internationally recognized process offers two benefits, GHG reduction and renewable energy generation. Chicago Climate Exchange verifies and approves the procedures so that they comply with international protocols.

The Sasquatch Music Festival is raising the bar on carbon neutrality and is going to compensate for all direct and indirect GHG emissions generated by this event. Offsets will be purchased to compensate for the GHG emissions generated by:

        * All Sasquatch attendees fuel consumption

        * All energy used in the at The Gorge Amphitheatre

        * All artists fuel consumption

        * All staff vehicles and delivery trucks fuel consumption

Of course the entire festival will be promoting a recycling program with goals that are ambitious but achievable based on the results from last year. Also, the simple awareness factor should be measured, considering that with the environment being such a key feature of the festival the education and awareness being passed on to the tens of thousands of concert goers is priceless.

From our personal experiences at the festival, Sasquatch can be considered one of the leaders, if not the leader, for all large music festivals. We look forward to learning more from Sasquatch in the coming years and surely hope to be there to bring a first-hand account back to all our readers.