Festivals are a growing trend, and although being a temporary event, most festivals have vast material flows with a large negative impact on the environment. The Dutch festival Lowlands, a three-day event, for example uses 300.000 kwh of electricity generated by diesel-fuelled ge
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Festivals are a growing trend, and although being a temporary event, most festivals have vast material flows with a large negative impact on the environment. The Dutch festival Lowlands, a three-day event, for example uses 300.000 kwh of electricity generated by diesel-fuelled generators, 10.000 m3 water and 500.000 kg of solid waste (Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, 2017). As a result, the attention is growing to find ways how to organize more sustainable events. Initiatives like Green Events support this development, by seeing the festivals as an ideal testing ground for new sustainable innovations.
One festival taking the green developments at heart to become a more sustainable event is DGTL revolution.Throughout the year DGTL Revolution is searching for new technologies and innovations, they can introduce at the festival to reduce their waste, lower their emissions but moreover create awareness and stimulate sustainable action amongst their visitors (DGTL Revolution, 2017). A project Revolution has focused on this year, is their plastic material stream.
Despite of the hard cup and deposit system which is in place at the festival, the festival still has a large amount of single use plastic water bottles. The need for a change in our current wasteful plastic economy has been a subject which is being discussed more and more. The single use plastic bottles form an opportunity for DGTL festival to discover circular ways of processing PET bottles, minimizing their plastic footprint and taking the visitors along in this vision.
This graduation project has started with an extensive research to the current sustainable efforts of festivals, the view of visitors on those efforts and the current challenges in plastic recycling outside the festival context. This is done through desktop research and several interviews with festival visitors and experts. A key finding of the research were the several barriers visitors experience, stopping them from behaving pro-environmental, like collecting and separating plastic at a festival or in their home environment. DGTL should facilitate a deposit system which overcomes those barriers of individuality, responsibility and practicality.
The following design brief was formulated from all the insights of the research; ‘How can DGTL positively change visitors attitude towards plastic recycling, using the deposit system at DGTL as a vehicle, illustrating its aim and result increasing people’s feel of responsibility.’
During the exploration phase new innovations in plastic recycling have been approached to collaborate with DGTL festival, aiming to process the plastic bottles into valuable resources again. Next to those innovations, the focus was on getting the visitors more involved in the goal of the deposit system. Overcoming the barriers by increasing the practicality of the system and showing them the aim and result of the system. This could have an effect on their perspective towards plastic recycling, and stimulate them to copy this behavior outside of the festival context.
The final concept which was implemented at the festival consisted of several elements. The central point was called the resource street. Here all the materials of the festival came together at the recycle hub were they were checked and separated (Figure 2). Furthermore the visitors were able to see the chemical recycling innovation pyrolysis, turning bottle caps into oil, a plastic container where all the plastic bottles were collected, showing it massive amount to the visitor as well as explaining how the bottles will be recycled into high quality rPET.
This concept is further supported by several decentralised designs namely transparent collection behind the bars, signing with information about the system and last mobile collection vehicles. All those elements have been implemented at the festival and evaluated, through interviews, a questionnaire and some data analysis about the collection.
This master thesis describes the first steps a festival can take, to move towards a more transparent resource handling, through which valuable resources can be regained from plastic bottles. At the same time, the visitor is involved in this system, leading to a larger effect by improving their perspective and behavior towards plastic recycling.
