What inspired Sziget to place sustainability at the core of the festival experience?

“Being environmentally conscious has been part of the operation since 2002, when green measures mostly focused on recycling and waste management.

In 2015, Sziget launched a campaign focusing on its core values, including a loud and more visible approach for taking a stand for social and environmental issues, a response to these challenges and a space for open discussion. Green Sziget, as a brand, emerged as a part of this.

Sustainability and the need to live well and sustainably and contribute to the environment and society are deeply cultural needs. A festival should be able to provide this space for its visitors and actively contribute to awareness raising.

And of course, we need to minimise our negative impact while maximising our positive impact on the environment and society.”

Can you share some of the most impactful green initiatives implemented in recent years?

“The most visible change was reached by measures aiming to phase out single-use plastics and reduce waste generated: introduction of the deposit based reusable cups, the “don’t suck” campaign to phase out straws, and biodegradable tableware – for which we have a composting system in place to ensure its way back to nature.

In the past few years, a criteria system has been introduced for caterers. Caterers can choose which green measures they would like to comply with (at least 3 out of 6). This way we incentivized them to offer more vegan/vegetarian meals, use more local, seasonal, organic certified products, etc.

Another impactful measure was collecting data and monitoring results. It is important to understand what you are doing and whether it is successful.”

How do you balance sustainability with the logistics and scale of such a major international event?

“It is a challenge, but luckily, management and crew are competent and conscious about environmental issues and wouldn’t question the need for greening our measures.

Logistics and sustainability kind of go hand in hand – you want your operations to be the most optimised, eg, no unnecessary travels, which means less emissions. It also means smart planning and careful procurement of new materials.

Struggles rather come from the lack of local sustainable resources, suppliers, which could cater for the needs of a large-scale event.”

What role does community engagement – like Szitizen Prime or the tent donation program – play in Sziget’s sustainability vision?

“Sustainability has to be based on community, we have to know each other to be able to feel responsible for each other. We truly believe that the sense of freedom, creativity and culture can create common ground, on which we can build.

These are also behavioral change moments, where people can possibly learn about more sustainable choices – e.g. if they engage in playful educational games about sustainable and healthy eating, they collect a stamp in their Sziget Passport.”

What have been the biggest challenges in greening the festival, and how have they been overcome?

“There are different aspects of the challenges. We have structural issues, like consumption and growth-focused economic surroundings as a norm, lack of local sustainable suppliers, etc. but we tried to by incentivizing caterers to use local, seasonal suppliers.

We can also see a sustainable behavior gap. Our visitors have a positive attitude towards sustainability in general, but their actual behaviour seems to be disconnected from this. E.g. we saw an increasing demand for vegan/vegetarian dishes, so we increased such meal options, but consumption stayed rather meat based.  

We can also see a sustainable behaviour gap. Our visitors have a positive attitude towards sustainability in general, but their actual behaviour seems to be disconnected from this. E.g. we saw an increasing demand for vegan/vegetarian dishes, so we increased such meal options, but consumption stayed rather meat-based. We have different programs and campaigns to positively influence these choices, but it takes time.

There are also challenges coming from the legal regulations, for example, we cannot encourage the use of reusable tableware and cutlery, or cannot experiment with compost toilets.

On a more practical note, a huge problem is caused by the camping waste left behind after the festival. We have a charity partner for reallocating the tents, and the damaged ones are used to make upcycled merch products. But it still creates a huge amount of waste and pollution and takes a lot of time and human resources to clean – and we generally don’t have a good feeling about people seeing these tents and camping equipment as single-use products. We tried to introduce a system to positively incentivise people to take away their tents, but it didn’t seem enough, so this year there is a compulsory tent deposit.”

Looking forward, how does Sziget plan to continue innovating in sustainability and social impact?

“Besides further developing our current initiatives, we would like to collaborate with the local government, NGOs and local community to develop nature-based solutions on the island (Sziget located on an island, and Sziget means island) for long-term ecological impact, support biodiversity and the local community.

We would like to focus more on behaviour change and awareness raising. Our actions would be based on researching visitor attitudes and communicating effectively to nudge people towards more environmentally conscious decisions.”