Top Tips for a Green Music Scene | Byron Bay Bluesfest

The venue is nestled on the Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, just north of Byron Bay and boasts 7 performance stages, 5 licensed bars, and over 100 food & market stalls. Today, this festival attracts an audience of over 100,000 music lovers from all over the world! Times have really changed since its humble beginnings at The Arts Factory aka “The Piggery” with a crowd of 6,000 in 1990.

Byron Bay gained its reputation as a hippy, happy, alternative town after Nimbin’s Aquarius Music Festival in the 1970s. People began flocking to Byron Bay to live in this little slice of paradise. Byron’s residents began valuing the natural assets and beauty of the area over money/ profit. Any development that would significantly impact the environment, compromise the natural beauty of the area or their selected lifestyles was unwelcome. They understood the area needed time to recover from industries such as sand mining, whaling, fishing, dairy farming, and meat works, which were unsustainable and took a toll on the environment. By the 1990s, the new “ethos” of Byron Bay was fully formed.

This same attitude is still very much alive and attracts millions of people to Byron Bay today. The mass crowds headed this way for Bluesfest will have a big impact on the environment…Why not make it a positive one? Music festivals are places where a little bit of magic happens…When you’re at a festival, your heart and mind is opened to new ideas, new ways of behaving, new ways of seeing the world. The combination of music, with the emotion it brings, and a crowd of like-minded people all moving to the same beat, makes festivals a place where people can come together and make deep change.

Single-use plastics are destroying our planet. By 2050, there may be more plastic in the ocean than fish, unless we change our course. Green Music Australia launched the #BYObottle campaign in hopes of ridding the music festival scene of single-use water bottles. They are everywhere, but totally unnecessary with obvious alternatives. They are the most obvious environmental impact, covering the festival grounds by early evening.

Green Music has worked with festivals to make more water refill stations available and has convinced many bars and stall holders not to sell plastic. Just over summer 2017, they prevented nearly 200,000 single-use plastics from being used and thrown away. That’s enough to make a big difference: saving birds, turtles, and other marine life; cutting emissions due to manufacture, transport and waste treatment. They’ve proven trashed venues do not have to be the fate of festivals….A small effort from everyone can make a really big difference. Together we can keep the music scene green and stay hydrated without costing the planet.

Having won multiple green awards, Byron Bay’s Bluesfest continues their campaign with the message “Refuse, Reuse, Reduce, & Recycle”. Their stalls use 100% recyclable packaging and there’s a massive recycling production onsite. As a community, we can work towards leaving no trace and decreasing waste that will end up in the landfill or our oceans.

Music festival fans, here’s 6 simple ways to be Green at Blues:

1. Bring reusable water bottles, containers & utensils

2. Toss cigarettes in the bin

3. Place recyclables in the recycle bin ( Place rubbish in the appropriate bin.)

4. Keep your site clean & tidy as you go

5. Leave no trace – Take your tent, chairs, clothes, booze, food, eskys with you

6. Avoid detaching the pull rings from beer cans

Jump aboard one of Out of the Blue Adventures coastal or river cruises. We are an eco cruise company that supports “Take 3 for the Sea”, a clean beach initiative which discourages single use plastics.

Sit back, relax, and breathe in the ocean air while we cruise along Byron’s iconic coastline and explore Cape Byron Marine Park on our Byron Bound Eco Cruise. We make our way up the coast from Ballina to Julian Rocks, a nature reserve home to tropical marine creatures including manta rays, dolphins and sea turtles. Imagine viewing the Cape Byron Lighthouse from a whole new perspective, the water!

Amongst other responsibilities, we discourage single-use plastic; therefore, we don’t use plastic water bottles aboard our eco-vessel. We have seen how plastic wreaks havoc on the marine life we love. Plastic does not decompose. Instead, it breaks down into micro bits which build up the food chain and eventually reaches those at the top like humpback whales. We are excited for our favorite annual visitors. Being Australia’s most easterly point, Byron Bay is center-stage for the humpback whales on their migration along the coast. Out of the Blue can’t wait to take you out for a Byron Bay whale watching Tour!