What springs to mind when you hear the words Electric Picnic? Music, obviously, and maybe a vague image of wellie-wearing teens and thirtysomethings wandering around fields, clutching plastic cups full of warm beer. According to the Irish Times, there is another, more admirable facet to the music festival currently under way in Stradbally. It will be “one of the most impressive environmental showcases ever assembled in Ireland”.
Not only does the Picnic boast recycling bins, eco-friendly loos, reusable beer cups and a raft of other green initiatives, but this year it features The Global Green, where festival-goers can watch films, visit exhibits and attend debates and workshops about environmental issues such as oil and climate change. While the main stage of the festival plays host to Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Ros and the Sex Pistols, the Global Green has Eamon Ryan and Trevor Sargent. Hey, never mind the b******s, here’s the Green party.
John Gibbons, the founder of Climatechange.ie, went on Today FM’s Last Word to discuss the eco-friendly side of the festival. So did I. Gibbons said this year’s Picnic would be “green in tooth and claw”, an ideal place to convey the green agenda to those who want to “engage their minds as well as their ears”.
While I couldn’t deny the organisers of the Global Green events were earnest and well-meaning, I scoffed at the idea of 35,000 drunk gig-goers paying any attention to seminars about energy-saving and complained about the cringeworthy names of some of the sessions, such as Sustainable Development My Ass! and What the F**k is Sustainability?
Gibbons quoted a little Yeats — “peace comes dropping slow” — and agreed that while the Global Green might not cause any eco-Pauline conversions, it could be part of a drip-drip process. Then a listener texted in to say the Electric Picnic was a festival for crusty hippies and we all laughed.
Afterwards, I felt a little guilty. Instead of sneering at the do-gooders, maybe I should reassess my Picnic plans and consider becoming part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Maybe I should become more of a crusty hippy.
I had planned to spend Saturday afternoon bopping along to a band called Midnight Juggernauts, recently described by the New York Times as “cosmically synthetic, subversively euphoric”. That’s good, right? But Midnight Juggernauts are Australian. Merely by being part of their audience I would be implicitly condoning their carbon footprint, which has to be enormous.
Midnight Juggernauts be damned, I decided. While they were showcasing their “mishmash of glam rock, disco and electro pop” (New York Times again), I would be at the Global Green, attending an illustrated presentation on the life of Buckminster Fuller who, according to the programme notes, was “the creator of the geodesic dome and champion of autonomous living”. It wasn’t quite the hedonistic meltdown I’d been looking forward to, but it must be a worthier way of passing my time.
Soon I was caught up in eco-festival fever and determined to do even more. I pledged to use the pedal-powered phone recharger. I vowed to take at least one trip to the compost toilet. I would only eat at the solar-powered café. Of course none of those facilities would be in Stradbally were it not for the Electric Picnic, so they were presumably hauled there on the back of emissions-belching low-loaders.
Knowing this, I felt compelled to do even more to be an environmentally friendly festival-goer. Googling turned up the website of GreenFestivalMan who suggests 10 “carbon-busting” greener festival tips. Some are easy. I’m already giving a lift to a friend. I’m always happy to tuck into organic, locally sourced food. And if my tent is in ribbons by tomorrow and not worth bringing home, I’m willing to do as GreenFestivalMan says and save the tent poles to use again. I’ve never yet had the need for a flagpole, but you never know.
Other greener festival tips were more challenging and would have required more organisation. I called a friend of mine who is an extremely organised Electric Picnic veteran. Earlier in the week, she had e-mailed us a list of 60 essentials, from wet wipes to folding armchairs. Why, I asked her, did she not have personal solar panels and mini wind-powered generators on her list, as GreenFestivalMan advised? She howled with laughter.
Undeterred, I ploughed on. “And are your tent pegs made from reconstituted potato starch?” I demanded. “No,” she said. “They’re metal ones.”
“What if you lose them in the ground and some woodland creature chokes on them?” She laughed even more loudly.
Truth is, nobody goes to Electric Picnic, or any other festival, to learn more about environmental issues. We go to have fun, hang out with friends and listen to music. And while it’s nice to have our liberal, middle-class sensibilities pandered to with eco-friendly initiatives, I can’t help but think the money would be better spent on more tangible environmental projects. On reflection, even the crusty hippies might agree.
