November 2, 2010 - Austin Rock Green Vibes at ACL

  Well, It finally happened! The Austin City Limits Music Festival was given perfect weather. The past few years, the stars couldn't quite align, making it either a dried out dustbowl or a flooded Dillo Dirt mud pit. In 2010, the curse was broken, and we were delivered a perfect weekend of blue skies and cool breezes for 75,000 people to enjoy each day.

First and foremost, getting to the festival requires alternative methods to be employed by the masses, as there is not organized parking at Zilker Park. One option is Capital Metro, the Austin public bus system, which provides free shuttles to and from the park from multiple locations in Austin. While you do have to wait in line, this method proves to be quite energy efficient and one of the effective ways many people get to the festival. One of the better, more convenient options of course is to bike to the festival. As you walk up to the various festival entrances, a sea of bike racks awaits you. Mellow Johnny's bike shop, Lance Armstrong's famous store in the heart of downtown Austin, is also onsite to aid the bikers with maintenance problems in order to get them home safely. Of course, there is also the option to walk to the festival, which always promises to be interesting. A wide array of entrepreneurs exists on the way to the festival selling clothing, accessories, snacks and beers "to go". So, if you're looking to shop at a glance and pick up a bite on the way, walking is the way to go.

Now, once you are inside the gates of Zilker Park, there is one main priority. Beer Water.  Attendees are allowed to carry in no more than 2 factory-sealed water bottles which can be refilled throughout the park at various refill stations.  This year, for the first time, volunteers operated the water stations in order to avoid the lakes that formed around the faucets caused by accidental spillage and misuse of water by patrons. By the end of the third day this year, the refillable water stations prevented the purchase of over 223,000 bottles of water! Festival goers were therefore able to hang on to their cash and stay well hydrated while wasting less water and plastic in the process.

With a large festival like ACL, trash and recycling can be a major problem, and the brute of the responsibility lies on people ensuring their recyclables make it to the right place. For the most part, as you might expect, this doesn't really happen, so the ever popular Rock and Recycle program provides the perfect solution. Participants pick up recycling bags from the rock and recycle center to fill up with recyclables from throughout the park. These participants served as mobile recycling bins in addition to the recycling bins placed throughout Zilker. These individuals are happy to accept your cans and bottles, knowing that once their bag is full, they will receive a free t-shirt and will have contributed to keeping the park cleaner throughout the weekend. This year the program filled over 3,000 bags of recycling. As more and more people take part in this crucial program, the clean up effort continues to decrease and the park is kept even more beautiful for the three festival days.

After the madness of the weekend had settled down, I had a chance to ask Emily Stengel, a manager at C3 who oversees several of the ACL Festival's and other C3 events' greening initiatives, a few questions:

On the website there are stats about the 2009 ACL Green mountain energy offsets; do you already have similar stats for 2010?

This year, Austin City Limits Fans came together to purchase 1,595 Fan Tags!  As a result of these fans' commitment, nearly 500,000 kilo-watt hours of Green-e certified wind power was purchased from the Goat Wind Farm near San Angelo, Texas.  This offsets the equivalent of 635,000 pounds of CO₂ avoided!  This has the same positive environmental impact as:

• Not driving a car over 700,000 miles, or
• Recycling more than 1.5 million aluminum cans, or
• The carbon absorbed by almost 40,000 trees in one year.

Individually, each green ticket offsets the equivalent of 400 pounds of CO₂ avoided.  That's like not driving your car 460 miles, recycling 160 pounds of newspaper, or planting 25 trees.

At the festival I noticed the water stations counting the number bottles saved, do you have the final number associated with this?

111, 850 Liters of water were poured out of these stations. This is equivalent to 223, 700 1/2 Liter bottles of water.

The water stations were operated by volunteers this year, is there an estimate of how much water was saved when compared to the self serve stations in years past?

The water stations introduced to ACL this year by Event Water Solutions were extremely effective in reducing wasted water around the stations, and keeping patrons hydrated. It was both a great patron service to have water containers filled by volunteers, as well as a way to ensure that these stations were strictly used for drinking water.

The Rock and Recycle program is a clear success every year, can you explain where that idea came from, and the level of growth in participation it has experienced?

The Rock & Recycle program was developed when ACL started in 2002 to reward patrons for being actively involved in the greening of the festival. Patrons enthusiastically participate every year to receive a commemorative t-shirt or larger prizes such as the 2009 Honda Insight giveaway. This program has a tremendous impact on keeping the festival grounds clean throughout the event.

Have the ACL planners always had 'greenness' in mind when it came to putting things together, or is this something that has grown with the festival?

ACL planners have always considered the environmental impact in festival operations and every year we strive to improve our existing programs, such as recycling, composting, carbon emission reduction, water usage, water conservation, and "green" messaging. This year, we supported local food production by introducing the HOPE Farmers Market, we supported environmental organizations in ACL Cares, an expanded area dedicated to nonprofit outreach, and improved our composting program in production catering and behind the food court and farmers market.

http://www.aclfestival.com/about-acl-festival/the-cause/

Can you provide the totals for diverted and landfilled waste as well as how much gasoline the onsite generators consumed?

• 59.04 tons / 2,258 cubic yards of Diverted waste
• 109.08 tons / 1,649 cubic yards of Landfilled waste
• 9,170 gallons of biodiesel burned by generators
• 1,205 gallons of gasoline burned by generators

By tonnage, we diverted 35%.  By cubic volume, we diverted 58%. These are fantastic results!

On the site, the festival claims to be 100% carbon neutral, could you explain how you managed to achieve this significant feat?

Green Mountain Energy Company calculates the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions created by the event's generators, shore power, staff travel and festival vehicles monitored. The footprint is then offset by the purchase of renewable energy credits and forest sequestration offsets. The emissions from all of C3 Presents' business operations are similarly calculated and offset.

Are the individual sponsors involved in the greening of the festival? The city of Austin? Or is this driven by the ACL organizers themselves?

ACL's new water sponsor, h2O has allowed ACL to eliminate bottled water sold in the festival. The water purchased at the event was stored in 100% recyclable, BPA free water cartons. The cartons are printed with water based, solvent free inks and on paper sourced from managed forests.  In 2009, all Rock & Recycle participants were entered to win a Honda Insight provided by Honda's sponsorship. 

We work with the city and the Austin Parks Foundation to improve and rejuvenate the Zilker Park every year.  The festival is also part of the city's Greenchoice program.  Here are the stats:

• 9 accounts on GreenChoice since September 2005.
• Average annual usage = 70,045 kWh
• Total usage over term of agreement = 350,227 kWh
• Avoided metric tons CO₂ = 174

That is the equivalent of taking 40 cars from Austin's busy roadways; Planting 270 acres of forest in Austin's parks; Powering 31 average Austin homes for a year.

GreenChoice® is a voluntary utility green power program that has been ranked #1 in the nation for kilowatt-hours sold for eight years in a row by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It is one of over 800 voluntary programs in the nation. All GreenChoice energy is from 100% renewable energy sources, mainly wind farms in West Texas.

As a GreenChoice subscriber, ACL has participated in putting over 9,000 megawatts of renewable energy into the Texas electric grid.

Does ACL exceed other similarly sized festivals in their greening efforts, or this an industry standard?

In my opinion, it has become common to minimize the environmental impact of large music festivals. I don't view this goal as a competition, but rather a worthy goal to improve existing programs and lessen our impact on the environment and surrounding communities. If our initiatives raise the standards for greening initiatives in the entertainment industry, then we will provide a great service to the environment. We can all learn from one another.

It is clear from speaking with Emily and attending the festival, that C3 and the Austin City Limits Music festival have the environment well within their minds while putting together this phenomenal event. They diverted over 50% by volume of the waste produced, and the onsite generators burned biodiesel over gasoline almost 10 to 1. Then, for all the CO2 created, Green Mountain Energy provides offsets to keep the festival 100% Carbon neutral. Not only do they give attendees green choices, but they back it up by running the festival on a green foundation.

Last year I found myself frustrated with the outcome of the event. The city's most beautiful park, which was closed for almost one year to replant and irrigate new grass, was destroyed in a mere three days and left as a quiet, barren stretch of dirt. This year, however, the park started and ended beautifully green. My only frustrations come from the individuals that don't live up to the standards the organizers lay out for us. I'm no saint, but the mentality at a large event can so easily be, "It doesn't matter what I do, what difference do I make alone." This is eerily similar to the attitudes of so many people in their day-to-day lives.  Hopefully, as time moves forward, we can all improve (including myself), both at events like Austin City Limits and in our daily lives and realize that we do individually make a difference, no matter how small.

Andy Rector is a Contributing Reporter for Green Guide Network. He lives and works from Austin, Texas.

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