Rhythm and Vines' festival director says he's hoping for zero waste this year after the launch of rent-a-tent scheme and other environmentally-focused initiatives.
Photo: Jared Donkin
Festival founder and director Hamish Pinkham told Checkpoint they had introduced a scheme making 900 tents available for the 15,000 expected campers to hire.
The festival will be held at the Waiohika Estate in Gisbourne between Tuesday, 29 December and Thursday, 31 December.
It is part of a drive to avoid a repeat of previous clean-ups after the event, when 58 tonnes of barely-used tents and festival waste headed for Gisborne's local tip.
Last year the waste weighed the equivalent of 21 elephants.
Festival organisers have teamed up with the Ministry for the Environment and the Sustainable Business Environment Network to reduce rubbish and tame festivalgoers' wasteful ways.
Pinkham said the Book-a-Tent would make a difference to the volume of rubbish this year, as it discouraged and did away with the need to use cheap single-use tents.
Rhythm and Vines was taking the lead in making festivals environmentally sustainable with other initiatives too, he said.
"We're on our way to get rid of single use plastic. We're also using compostables, with our eating utensils and we're encouraging recyclable cups."
Pinkham said the scale of the event made the efforts significant, with over 900 tents that could be re-used each year as the festival moves forward.
The tents were a start, but encouraging festivalgoers to take home what they came with and how they responded to that would determine how much rubbish was left this year.
Pinkham said it was hoped that would amount to zero waste.
He said there was a unified intent among the Ministry of the Environment, Sustainable Business Environment Network and the festival to promote the initiative and educate festivalgoers.
This year's post-festival clean-up would involve local school and sports groups, he said.
