Outside Lands Music Festival Offers Up Green Notes
This past weekend most of the swarms listened to rock and roll, rap, hip hop, and pop at the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco’s great Golden Gate Park, but we took time from the audio overload to explore the some of the green aspects of the festival.
It actually didn’t take long as a set of solar panels sat just outside the main entrance. After that, we hit the Eco Lands. The PG&E sponsored area offered up booths (organic farmer’s market), tents, exhibits (like solar education classes) that one doesn’t normally see in a rock ‘n’ roll venue. We grabbed an Eco Lands Passport, an inspiration from Jack Johnson’s All At Once Community, where green minded rockers could obtain “stamps” for doing certain activities such as recycling a cell phones, use the bike valet (we did), calculate your carbon footprint, or donate to a non-profit.
We found ourselves super impressed with the Panhandle Stage not only because we saw the politically and socially charged K’Naan here but the stage actually ran on solar. That’s right, all the amps, mikes, lights, everything off the grid. The stage utilized a 4-kilowatt solar system, and by using solar power rather than a diesel generator or grid power, they avoided emitting approximately 3,000 lbs per day (1.5 metric tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere.
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Not until the event concluded did we even realize that people could win prizes for recycling bottles and cups. If we would have picked up 250 bottles then we could have snagged some organic jeans. It didn’t seem like many people knew about this eco-barter system. Too bad because a lot of plastic littered the grounds over the three days.
We’d like to see Jack Johnson or Radiohead play next year on a main, off the grid powered, stage. We’re already psyched not only for an even greener version of Outside Lands 2009 but for other event concerts and what green, social and political action they will take to raise the bar.
