With thousands of music-lovers attending reggae festivals, activists have long worried about the environmental impact. From hundreds, to hundreds of thousands of guests, festivals of every size create many forms of waste, stress the environmental infrastructure of an area, require mass amounts of energy, increase emission levels and pose potential damage to the festival site. Reggae festivals across the globe have implemented similar programs – recycling, reducing single-use plastic products, using compostable materials, providing reusable water bottles, hosting educational forums, requiring pack-in/pack-out policies, offsetting carbon emissions and more – to shrink their footprint on the environment.

( Originally printed in the “Reggae Festivals Go Green” article in Reggae Festival Guide 2019 Magazine by Jessica Farthing and Irene Johnson)

Reggae Festival Guide is thrilled to see that the world’s premier reggae festival – Reggae Sumfest, is now “Going Green”. They recently posted this caption on their Instagram:

Go Green with Sumfest as we partner with the @RecyclingPartners and @alligatorheadfoundation for the 27th staging of this festival. ♻️

Here’s how we will be playing our part:

@RecyclingPartners will be managing collection of plastics for the week of Sumfest July 14-20 to ensure that proper recycling practices are met.

@alligatorheadfoundation will be showcasing how recycled plastic can be used to create useful items facilitated by the use of a 3D printer

We and our partners will be doing at least two beach cleanups. One before the festival and one after the festival – let us know if you’d like to help

So Go Green 🌱 with Sumfest this year …Recycle and Reuse. Let’s save our environment and our beautiful island 🏖  

Reggae Festivals are one of our favorite things in life, however, the waste that accumulates from these huge gatherings has become quite an issue. We at RFG commend Reggae Sumfest for taking the initiative to recycle + upcycle plastics and do beach cleanups. To learn more please visit reggaesumfest.com