By far one of the most eco-friendly events we attend throughout the festival season is the Arise Festival, which sets a standard for conscientious gathering.
“ARISE is renowned for bold and progressive ‘global cooling’ initiatives, such as a long-held commitment to planting one tree with every ticket sold, staging a pre-festival permaculture training, local sourcing, an organic farmer’s market in the campground, and a leave-no-trace ethos.”
We experienced all of these initiatives first hand while at the festival. It’s not easy to put on such a large event and keep your environmental impact low. We wanted to highlight these efforts below so perhaps other festivals can follow suit and continue to “green” up their events.
Planting one tree with every ticket sold
Arise partners with Trees, Water & People each year to plant one tree for every ticket to the festival sold. TWP is a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 by Stuart Conway and Richard Fox. They encourage local people to play active roles in protecting, conserving and managing their natural resources for long-term wellbeing.
Pre-Festival Permaculture Training
A host of extremely experienced and knowledgeable experts guide participants through three days of permaculture education. In the three days prior to the festival, attendees take part in workshops that focus on “regenerating ecology and exploring community building through action-oriented organizing.” You can learn about Natural Building, Rainwater Harvesting, Earthworks, and Forest Gardening for the first two days, then put your knowledge into action with the Permaculture Action Day. This is a great way to kick off your festival!
Local Sourcing
Local sourcing is a form of acquiring goods needed for a business (or festival) from the area directly around the enterprise. With Arise taking place on the grounds of Sunrise Ranch, it was a wonderful idea for them to utilize this method of sourcing. Although, I’m sure there are plenty of items (wristbands, lighting equipment etc.) that make local sourcing harder for the festival. Congrats to Arise creators for sticking to their guns and supporting the Colorado economy.
Organic Famers Market in the Campground
Oh, what a wonderful way to restock on vegetables and produce throughout the festival. You could purchase fresh food right in the campground, from the land you were currently camping on. This is unique to this festival. So far, we haven’t been to another that sells produce directly from the land the festival is held on.
Leave-No-Trace Ethos
Arise Festival paired with Zero Hero, a Colorado-based recycling and composting company, to keep the event LNT friendly. Zero Hero makes recycling, trash management and composting achievable and easy. You may have seen their three option “trash, recycle, compost” pop-ups at recent events.
These weren’t the only things Arise did to keep the event green. Check out the list from their site for more acts of greeness.
We always have a wonderful time at Arise. We are happy to see that even as the event grows, they aren’t shying away from keeping it eco-conscious. In fact, they emphasize more and more sustainable practices each year. We hope to bring some of the practices we saw at Arise to other festivals we attend along the tour.
Up next we have Mountain Town Music Festival at Keystone. It will be a day of all things Colorado. Warm summer days, free live music from national acts and the harvest season for our colorful state. See you there!
There is one way for this tour to be a reality, our sponsors! Sending a thank you shout out to our title sponsor Nite Ize, and all of our other awesome sponsors that make this happen: Crazy Creek, National Geographic, Sea to Summit, Mountain House, Lowe Alpine, Old Town, Leki, HydraPak, UCO Gear and Wenzel. If you like the gear that keeps us groovin’ click here to enter for a chance to win
