Throw a party – help the planet
AWairarapa music event is hoping to make partying sustainable with what’s believed to be the country’s first carbon-positive festival.
From its inception a few years ago, Tora Bombora has held sustainability as a core value, but this year, festival director Louis Murphy-Harris is hoping to make the event even more climatefriendly.
“We just thought why don’t we make this a carbon-positive festival.”
The sold-out event has been sponsored by Forever Forests and all emissions from the festival, including attendees’ transport, will be offset.
“Every entity produces carbon, everyone produces carbon, so one way to offset that is by planting more trees or managing forests.” Murphy-Harris said guests are asked not to bring soft plastics and buying poor-quality single-use goods is not acceptable.
“The whole policy of Tora’s waste is bring your own and take your own. So we don’t have any rubbish bins on site.”
Attendees are given a compostable cassava root bag on entry, and they are asked to take it with them when they leave and any waste they generate during the festival.
“If we don’t change the way we consume, act, live and behave around others, we won’t be experiencing the beautiful environment that you and I are lucky to have.” Forever Forests manager Adrian Loo said the company decided to partner with the festival because of its sustainable ethos and Murphy-Harris’ desire to protect the environment.
Due to the festival’s size and target demographic, Murphy-Harris said Tora Bombora was easier to manage sustainability-wise than larger festivals. “Massive mainstream festivals are all doing fantastic things, too, slowly, to try to reduce their footprints, their emissions and alter the behaviour of their attendees. Which is super cool. It’s just a long, hard battle, especially when people are pretty drunk or just want to party.”
It was feasible to do sustainability on a larger scale, but it’s up to the festivals to market the fact and drive it into attendees well before they come on site.