WOMADelaide on song with cutting waste by 98% at its world music festival in Adelaide city's Botanic Park
A bring-your-own-bottle iniative was introduced at the 2018 WOMADelaide music festival, with (top) patrons lining up to fill up with SA Water tap supply. Working with Greening Australia to lessen its carbon footprint, WOMADelaide invested $2 from every ticket into tree plantings to create native biodiverse forests. Images (below) from 2009, 2014 and 2016 show growth progress at the Coorong and Lower Lakes WOMAdelaide forest site.
The WOMADelaide international music festival in Adelaide city’s Botanic Park became lead singer in the chorus of South Australian events reducing waste.
In 2001, the South Australian government's Environment Protection Agency gave $20,000 as part its work with WOMADdelaide organisers to support minimising, separating and recycling waste at their four-day event, regularly attracting more than 20,000 people a day.
In 2018, the festival moved to reusable cups and bottles to engage in circular economy practices. A mobile Wash Against Waste van was stationed within the main grounds allowing all stock to be cleaned and recirculated throughout the long weekend. Each cup was reused as much as possible and collected at the end of the event to be used at the next festival.
WOMADelaide, striving to be a completely zero-waste-to-landfill festival, had reached a 98% level by 2023. All plates, cutlery, serviettes and any items sold in packaging at WOMADelaide were fully compostable or recyclable, with segmented bins throughout the park at the festival.
WOMADelaide’s waste management program was coordinated by Australian Green Clean, market leaders in the delivery of high quality and environmentally sustainable cleaning and waste management. Working in partnership with SITA waste management and Jeffries organics, Australian Green Clean provided a zero-waste solution for WOMADelaide. All organic waste was mulched by Jeffries, treated for composting and delivered back to be used by the Botanic Gardens. Jeffries provided this mulch free of charge.
Australian Green Clean also helped educate the WOMADelaide volunteer Green Team on the festival’s waste management pathways and reclamation efforts with guided tours of their processing plant. The Green Team, in turn, educated and directed patrons on WOMADelaide’s waste streams and recycling efforts.
Among new anti-waste methods tried at WOMADelaide 2019 was investing in more 3000 reusable ties. From 2007, Greening Australia and WOMADelaide worked to offset the festival’s carbon footprint by investing $2 from every ticket sold back into tree plantings to create native biodiverse forests in regional South Australia.
As of 2020, more than 75,000 native trees and shrubs had been planted in two WOMADelaide forests, near the Coorong and Lower Lakes and on Kangaroo Island, to offset over 21,650 tonnes of carbon emissions. The largest planting site of 50 hectares near Langhorne Creek between the Ferries-McDonald Conservation Park and the Bremer River matured into a mallee woodland, supporting 70 bird species, including rare and threatened bird species like the hooded robin and diamond firetail.
The most recent plantings were on Kangaroo Island, where groves of drooping sheoak (allocasuarina verticillata) were being established as a vital food source for the endangered glossy black cockatoo. The site also included 20 hectares for reconstructed Kangaroo Island narrow-leaf mallee (Eucalyptus cneorifolia) woodland, a nationally threatened ecological community found nowhere else on Earth. WOMADelaide encouraged patrons to ride a bike with staffed parks for more than 700 bikes at each main entrance.