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Definitions

For the production of festivals, a wide range of materials is being used, which are purchased before or recycled after the festival. It is critical for festival organizers to monitor their specific material and waste flows, to determine where the highest impact can be achieved. At this time, based on the initial insights from festivals, three main material groups have been identified:

1. Building & production materials (incl. decoration  and stages, etc)
2. Catering serving materials (incl. cutlery, etc)
3. Materials brought in by the audience (incl. campsite materials, etc)

These materials currently often end up as residual waste, which traditionally ends up in landfills or in waste incineration plants, causing negative impacts on the environment. Furthermore, waste flows lead to GHG emissions generated by the transport of waste, by processing of waste, by recycling processes and by landfill disposal. The impact of the production and processing of these materials on GHG emissions, is calculated under Scope 3. The emissions from transporting these materials to and from the festival site are covered under the theme Travel & Transport.

At this time, the impact of rented and reused materials is not considered in the model and their GHG emissions are currently not being calculated in the GDCF Monitor, since such materials are reused many times and the production footprint therefore only accounts for a very limited part of the total footprint. Moreover, measuring the material flows including all rental and reused materials is very complex, which at this time is expected to be hardly measurable by festival organizations.

R-Ladder

The GDCF strives for the highest level of circularity on the R-ladder. The R-ladder shows that preventing raw-materials and the use of resources is a starting point that precedes thinking about reuse of materials and resources where possible. The following levels are defined, from highest priority, to lowest priority:

• Refuse: prevent raw-materials use
• Reduce: decrease raw-materials use
• Rethink: redesign processes to become circular
• Reuse: use product again (second-hand)
• Repair: maintain and repair product
• Refurbish: revive product
• Remanufacture: make new product from second-hand
• Repurpose: reuse product for a different function
• Recycle: salvage material streams with highest possible value
• Recover: incinerate waste with energy recovery