Sustainable festival

It is important for us to organize a festival in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. We care about the environment, our ecological footprint and social aspects of the sustainability.

Points of attentions at Viljandi Folk Music Festival 2019:

  • Reusing and recycling materials
  • Collecting and sorting waste
  • Reducing and compensating our ecological footprint
  • Accessibility and safety
  • Awareness-raising
  • Alternative means of transport
  • Social equality

RECYCLE

We use recycled materials to design the stages and the festival area. Most of the materials have seen many festivals already and will, in different forms, see many festivals to come. We organize different collecting actions, if needed, to reuse old clothes, records etc in the organizational works of the festival.

The youth of ETHNO camp will have a uniform by printing the ETHNO logo on the old T-shirts they bring along themselves.

We create many products on the principles of recycling. For example, in collaboration with NGO Workshops (which focuses on creating working opportunities for mentally challenged people), the old fabric banners get a new life as bags for folk friends. With the help of Estonian Native Crafts Department of Viljandi Cultural Academy, we have recycled the old festival T-shirts by printing new patterns on them or by turning them into new products altogether. We offer pure drinking water to everyone and we invite everyone to refill their bottles and cups before and during the festival to reduce the amount of plastic bottles bought at the festival.

COLLECTING AND SORTING WASTE

We use compostable dishes in our team catering. One of the important criteria when choosing caterers, is the use of biodegradable food containers. Most of our caterers are following that guideline. The most progressive caterers serve drinks in reusable cups. We pay attention to collecting different types of waste materials and we also expect this from the festival caterers. We collect paper, film, biological, oil and glass waste.

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

We are measuring our ecological footprint for the first time at the festival of 2019 and we are headed towards minimizing emissions.

ACCESSIBILITY AND SAFETY

We want our festival to be accessible and safe for everyone. We have made our website accessible to visually impaired people. Everyone is welcome at the festival, the accompanying person of a visually impaired person can enter the festival for free.

AWARENESS-RAISING

We are promoting green lifestyle together with Estonian Green Movement. People can find out more about restorable energy resources through practical activities at the Energy Point of the Festival. You can create electricity and boil water to make coffee, tea or porridge, or switch on a light bulb, hair dryer or some other electrical equipment – all that by riding a bike. Different bigger and smaller sun panels help you charge your phone. In addition, the experts are present to answer all environment and energy related questions. There’s also a chance to find out more about sorting waste – children can play a sorting game and grown-ups can examine real sorting systems and containers.

ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF TRANSPORT

We recommend our guests to use alternative and sustainable means of transport to get to the festival. There’s a Folk Train to Viljandi, a special price offer for festival guests in collaboration with Hansa Liinid to get to the festival and back home by bus, a bicycle parking lot by the main entrance and a chance to leave your backpacks to luggage hold. Since the city of Viljandi is comfortably small, we encourage our guests to get around and explore it on foot.

SOCIAL EQUALITY

Everyone is welcome at our festival regardless of race, gender or age. We value Estonian regional culture and traditions. We do everything to cherish and carry them on. We also equally respect other cultures of the world and invite representatives of different cultures and traditions to perform at our festival – all that in order to present and preserve the diversity of the world.