SA Music Blog

Rocking the Daisies 2009 was hosted on Cloof Wine Estate in Darling from 9 – 11 October 2009. 

As South Africa’s premier eco-friendly music and lifestyle festival, Rocking the Daisies once again collaborated with reputable green partners to incorporate innovative, environmentally conscious initiatives into the festival and to spread the message of ‘play hard, tread lightly’. 

This year the festival was supported by the WWF South Africa and Greenpeace who, together with Hemporium, OceanMinded, Food and Trees for Africa (FTFA) and the Conscious Cinema, made up the educational Green Village. Steadfast Greening conducted a ‘green’ audit of the festival to determine its carbon footprint and greening initiatives including the recycling, the utilisation of renewable energy sources, Walking the Daisies, Cycle to Daisies, car pooling initiatives and the like. 

Says Brian Little, Festival Director: “Our objective of planning and hosting the festival in an eco-friendly manner is to minimize the negative environmental impact that the event will have, and to simultaneously maximize the positive social and economic benefits through effective resource management”.

The eco audit and calculation of the carbon footprint takes into consideration the measurable activities over the 10 month period. These includes the electricity consumed or waste produced in the production office and at the event, the operation and implementation of the event including the process for recycling and procurement of goods and services; and the general feedback from interviews with festival goers and traders. 

Waste generated at Rocking the Daisies was either recycled or composted, which amounted to a total of 19,99 tons. The breakdown of waste collected and recycled is as follows:

Glass                11,32 tons         57%

Metal / tin cans 3,28 tons          16%

Plastic              2,57 tons          13%

Cardboard        1,2 tons            6%

General Waste   1,62 tons          8%

TOTAL             19,99 tons

The green audit conducted by Steadfast Greening indicated that 11 tons of CO2eq was required to offset for the energy usage at the event.  This was done through buying eleven renewable energy certificates (RECs) from GreenX, which provided 11 mega watt-hours of renewable energy.  In addition to this, Complete Events, the organisers of the festival are working with Food and Trees for Africa to plant 222 trees in impoverished areas in the Swartland District to offset the 266 tons of CO2eq for transport and print media related to the preparation and implementation of the festival. The number of trees required is calculated by using the standard FTFA calculation, which includes a buffer to cover loss of trees as it has been calculated that, on average, there is only a 40% survival rate for trees planted over a 15-year period.

Similarly, Global Carbon Exchange conducted a full green audit for the Rocking the Gardens festival hosted at Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg on 3 October 2009. The report showed that the event produced 28.46 tonnes of CO2e and that 74 trees will be required to offset this and render the event carbon neutral. Complete Events will once again work with FTFA to achieve this.

Continues Little: “There is no doubt that events impact the environment. The aim of presenting these results is to show that through careful planning and preparation we aim to minimise this impact as best we can in in the process attempt to educate our community on living greener lifestyles”. 

Says Grace Stead of Steadfast Greening:  “The conclusion is that the event was planned and implemented as a green event and that the event organisers did this with integrity. Their commitment to their motto of “party hard, tread light” is a true reflection of what they set out to achieve. As with any event of this nature there is always something to improve on, however the overall consensus was that Rocking the Daisies 2009 was a success and an improvement from previous years. We would like to commend Brain, Craig and the whole Complete Events team for the dedication in hosting Rocking the Daisies as an environmentally friendly lifestyle festival and urge them to keep this up”.

For the full Greening Audits for both events, please visit www.rockingthedaisies.com.

Also see http://rockingthedaisies.com/news/rtd-full-eco-audit/#more-1413 for a more indepth analysis