Go Greener, Australia

I went to the Perth Big Day Out on Sunday, and had a great time. Bjork and Rage Against the Machine were the headline acts, and put on a great show. I noticed on the Big Day Out website that this year they’ve gone carbon neutral, made more of an effort with the recycling, and provided some green tips for people.

The carbon neutral plan is interesting, and based on an audit made last year of their energy needs. It would be better for them to concentrate on efficiency, to reduce the amount of electricity and fuel they use over the whole series of concerts. But I think the organisers only have control of their own equipment and transport, and wouldn’t be able to do much about what they hire, the local food vans, the venues and so on.

I really noticed the improvement with the recycling. In previous years, there were no recycling bins at all. Last year, I tried to use them, but they were overflowing with plastic water bottles by 1pm, with another 10 hours to go before all the bands were finished. This year, the bins were emptied frequently, and apparently the contents will be properly sorted and disposed of. There were still many aluminium cans and plastic bottles left on the ground at the end of the day, but I hope the cleaning crew will be helping with the recycling as well.

I liked that their suggestions for what we can do include voting and talking to politicians and business-people. For ourselves, we did use bottled water - they don’t want people sneaking alcohol in, so the only drink you can bring in is unopened clear plastic water bottles. One of the good things about the Big Day Out is that they don’t insist on you buying more over-priced water from the vendors. We re-filled our bottles with tap water, which we found easily from the hand-written sign above the taps they’d set up for the purpose. So we got to reuse our bottles several times, and took them home to recycle ourselves. Also, we usually take the train to and from the event, but this year we carpooled with friends and used the Prius. I have to admit that I was grateful for the car when we saw the train packed full of sweaty people - I’m getting a little bit old for that kind of action!