Rachel Cernansky
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This past weekend's Monolith music festival had just about all the elements a concert-goer could ask for: awesome music, crazy performances, fantastic (and not so fantastic) beer, and clearly-marked recycling--and compost!--bins. But, with crowds that large and little education or cheerleading for the environment, the "compost-only" bins were filled with trash before sundown. An organizer can try, but in the end, it's up to the concert-goers to keep their music scene green.
The Monolith organizers tried to green the festival. They calculated the emissions affiliated with production of the festival and through carbonfund.org, bought offsets to neutralize the festival's impact. And Friends of Red Rocks were on hand to talk to passersby about the environment, getting involved in the community, and how they can volunteer to help clean up the park--an important task, given that concert-goers don't always act in the most environmentally sensitive of ways: one volunteer said after one concert this summer, they picked up 50 pounds of cigarette butts from one parking lot alone. (On other cleanup efforts, volunteers found a mobile meth lab out in the hills behind the ampitheater, and a decades-old disco ball--so don't blame only the smokers for the mess.)
Friends of Red Rocks have volunteers at the venue's concerts regularly, but they're usually out in the parking lots armed with recycling bins to help green the tailgating parties. At Monolith, however, they were inside tabling, and a little too sidelined by the music pumping nearby to hold effective conversations, whereas when they can get to people before the show starts, they have an opportunity to make a real impact. "It's people that see us out in the parking lot that really react," said the organization's Matt Meinhardt, because they see volunteers working to keep waste out of the landfill.
There were other ways to be green at Monolith--you could opt for the local beers on tap, fill your own water bottle at the water fountain, and of course, you could take the carbon-offset message home and calculate your own footprint. The festival also handed out stickers made from limestone instead of vinyl. (Baby steps, right?) And Monolith's environmental efforts were underway well before the festival began, with carpooling encouraged and a tree-planting event held days earlier to help green a downtown Denver community.
But, as festival sponsor Esurance's Paul Thompson said when we chatted in between sets, "What's great about the greening-the-concerts movement is that there's always room for more."
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