I’ll start with the obvious one. Disposable cups. Music festivals go hand in hand with single use plastic because people are consuming more beverages, including packaged drinks. The sea of hands holding plastic cups is almost an iconic image of what we understand a festival to look like — and it’s one we’ll have to rethink. Daytime family-friendly events are just as bad for plastic waste, especially when it comes to single-use coffee cups. Over 100 disposable coffee cups are thrown away every second in the UK — a figure which is bound to inflate during the summer reason.

For those wondering, even the single-use coffee cups branded ‘recyclable’, ‘recycled’ or ‘compostable’ present some issues. The design of the paper and thin plastic lining on the single-use cups makes the cup very difficult to recycle through standard recycling centres, and as a result, most end up in landfill or incineration. Many of the organisers also don’t take time to separate litter after the events are over, and everything is heaped into one gigantic mountain of waste.

It’s this broader organisational point that is important to emphasise. It’s all very well to tell individuals to bring along their reusable water bottle or coffee cup, but if this is where discussion around plastic pollution ends, it falls woefully short, shifting the main responsibility on the individual. We already know that it can be hard enough to remember and carry your phone, keys, and money along to events — let alone a reusable cup. We’re also governed by the set-up already in place at these events, and if we don’t have the option to refill our water bottle or choose a reusable cup, then our ability to reduce our plastic consumption is limited. So, what about the whole industry chipping in and doing their part too?

This is where deposit return schemes come in, providing a robust solution to the problem regarding plastic waste. I’ve been at two events over the last fortnight where I’ve used them. A conference that I attended at the end of May used a closed loop coffee cup scheme. It works like this: you get a reusable cup, fill it with your beverage of choice, hold onto it throughout the day at coffee breaks, and return it when you’re finished with it. This was an indoor venue, there was no charge to borrow the cup, and all you had to do was return the cup to a collection point at the end of the day (which were very centrally placed).

I then came across a similar scheme a few days later. This time at an outdoor flower festival, and the scheme was for soft and alcoholic drinks. The customer paid a small charge of £2 to borrow the cup, returned it when they’d finished, and got the £2 back in cash. Talking to the stall manager, she explained that experience of running deposit return schemes had shown that £2 was just enough of an incentive for people to actually return the cup. If the charge is too low, people don’t bother to return it and end up accumulating cups they don’t actually need. AVA also did something similar at the weekend, offering £1 off your drink when you brought the cup back to reuse it.

Deposit return schemes are one example of what some call ‘nudges’ — behavioural designs to gently ‘nudge’ people towards more environmentally responsible behaviour. The deposit return scheme is a big-ticket item, potentially saving thousands of kilograms of plastic waste being generated but does not represent an end in itself. So much more can be done, and I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole researching sustainable festivals to find out what lessons we could apply in a Northern Irish context. I should have known to look to Amsterdam immediately, as the Netherlands often leads the charge towards innovative climate solutions, and I eventually came across DGTL — the world’s first circular festival. ‘Circular’ because it keeps materials and resources in production for as long as possible, eliminating waste and promoting sharing and reusing. A ‘circular festival’ is literally the opposite of the fast-food equivalent type of festivals we have in the UK with their ‘take, use, throwaway’ culture.

Some of the solutions that DGTL have proposed are relatively straightforward to implement, for example, going cashless, introducing a deposit return scheme, serving reusable cutlery, and creating an entirely plant-based menu. There are bigger challenges to do with infrastructure, like 100% separation of all waste, and energy, like transitioning to renewables. For instance, where music at most festivals runs on diesel generators, the energy at DGTL comes from 100% renewable sources.

As we look to July and August, let’s encourage event organisers to consider their environmental contribution in concrete terms.

Outdoor events should be positive experiences for both people and planet. After all, Earth is the only dance floor we have.