Aug 25 2008

Outside Lands Festival Blends Rock And Eco-Awareness

outsidelands.jpgRock 'n' roll legend Janis Joplin launched many outdoor concerts in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in the late '60s but her spirit may have felt a little lost this weekend at the three-day, 65-bands Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in GGP. Eco-Lands environmental exhibits? Solar and wind-powered cell phone charging? Carbon footprint calculator? Help! What gives?

Festivals are going green. Ditto for political conventions. The Democratic convention opening this morning in Denver is coloring itself green. The party aims to recycle or compost at least 85 percent of the convention waste and leave town with a carbon-neutral footprint. Republicans won't be outdone at their party next week. The GOP "is committed to making this year's nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the 'greenest' in party history." Eco-awareness is spreading.

outsidelands_bike.jpgJoel Selvin, senior pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted the movement in his review today of the Outside Lands Festival:

"The technology exhibits proved surprisingly popular and the crowd easily adopted the three-way recycle/compost/landfill refuse collections that should now be standard for public events. For the young crowd that was the event's target audience, this kind of techno-eco-consciousness helped strengthen the subtext." Festival producers said 150,000 people attended over the weekend.

Corporate sponsors included AT&T, Visa, Dell and PG&E, and non-profit organizations set up tents to provide information on issues ranging from water conservation to voter registration to environmental education.

outsidelands_stage.jpgPG&E provided a range of energy technologies, services and information for the festival, among them the Outside Lands Solar Stage in partnership with Sustainable Waves, the Pop Up Cafe made entirely of materials reclaimed from the San Francisco dump, Smart Energy information, Carbon Footprint Calculators and the utility's ClimateSmart program.

 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson | Comments (0) digg delicioussend to a friendprint entry

 

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Community , Energy , Environment , Events , Partners , Solar , Sustainable , Wind

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