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C'est Bonn: Legendary music fest Bonnaroo urges fans to go green By Sarah van Schagen

23 Jun 2006

Two's company, 80,000's a crowd.

Photos: Sarah van Schagen.

For most of the year, this 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn., provides open, grassy pasture for a herd of cows. But for a short time each summer, the idyllic setting is taken over by a different kind of herd: the tens of thousands of fans who descend for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The now-legendary event features long-haired musician-types, massive stages, sprawling campgrounds, and vendors hawking all manner of food and crafts. As Thom Yorke -- the frontman for this year's headliner, Radiohead -- put it to the writhing masses waving glow-sticks under a star-speckled sky last week, "Now this is what we call a festival."

But with some 80,000 people camping out for the four-day, 24-hour jam-band showcase, whose other featured acts included Tom Petty, Phil Lesh, and Beck, Bonnaroo is much more than a festival. In the words of psych-folk singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart, "It's an opportunity to live in a temporary village centered around music, expression, awareness, consciousness -- all the goodies!" The festival literally becomes a community -- complete with residential areas, trailers with running water, port-o-potties, wi-fi and cell-phone service, security officials, and medical facilities -- and deals with many of the issues a small city might. Which is why organizers made a conscious effort to reduce its environmental footprint this year, and have even grander plans for the future.

So how do you convince throngs of half-naked, half-baked music lovers to go green? By showing the way. To reduce global-warming impacts, biodiesel generators powered all of the non-music stages, as well as the spotlights used at night and some of the golf carts zipping along the dust-covered "roads" between camping areas. 'Rooers were given the opportunity to purchase Cool Tags to offset their travel. In an area of the grounds known as "Planet Roo," a solar-powered stage was flanked by vendors selling organic foods and natural products, and booths manned by nonprofits ranging from national groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute to advocates working on local issues like mountaintop-removal mining.

Clean Vibes: the quicker picker-upper.

Then there was the eco-army dealing with waste: some 600 tons of it. Clean Vibes -- the official "pick up the mess organization," according to head picker-upper Anna Borofsky -- set up 2,000 trash barrels and 2,000 recycling bins throughout the grounds, carting filled bags to sorting facilities and composting areas. By recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans, Bonnaroo officials hoped to divert more than 60 percent of the event's waste from landfills. An organization called WastAway will also contribute, by melting down and compacting 250 tons of the non-recyclable, non-biodegradable garbage into "fluff" that can be used for park benches and construction.

"These festivals are a kind of microcosm of the real world," Borofsky said, adding that the Bonnaroo community serves as an example of what's possible. "By showing people that [this community can run] in a sustainable way, then we can apply that to the big picture."

Spanning all generations, Bonnaroo's "citizens" ranged from hippie to hipster, but Borofsky says she's noticed more of a "hippie-crite" presence at many of the large music festivals. "[We're trying to] teach people that if we don't respect the land that we're allowed to have these amazing gatherings on, then we're not going to be able to have these amazing gatherings anymore."