Roskilde Festival 2023 has taken significant steps towards a greener future by focusing on recycling and reusing. The festival, which attracts around 130,000 participants every year and turns the area into Denmark’s fourth-largest city, has implemented a range of new initiatives to reduce the amount of residual waste and increase the amount of recycled and reused materials.
According to Henrik Bondo, the head of the participant division, there have been previous challenges in increasing the recycling percentage of the total waste. “Our waste amounts have decreased over the years, but we have not been as successful in increasing the recycling percentage of the remaining waste,” he explains. To address this, this year, the festival management has put in extra resources and initiatives.
One of the key measures includes 250 volunteers who, between Sunday and Monday, will sort through leftovers with the aim of increasing recycling and reuse rates. Sanne Stephansen, the sustainability manager at Roskilde Festival, emphasizes the importance of educating both participants and volunteers in proper waste sorting. “We have a special focus on equipping our participants and volunteers to sort as much waste as possible in most places,” she says.
To make it easier for festival participants to correctly sort waste, a new sorting system has been introduced, which participants can use in their camps. The system is similar to the sorting methods many already know from home and divides the waste into four different categories.
Another important initiative, introduced in 2022 and continuing this year, is the option to rent camping equipment. This initiative aims to reduce single-use items and decrease the need to buy new equipment. “You could say that we took the entire negative impact of the products last year. So it is a positive impact that we are not producing new items, but ensuring that they are rented out again,” says Sanne Stephansen, emphasizing that reuse should always be better than single-use.
With these measures, Roskilde Festival hopes to create a more sustainable festival experience and set an example for other large events, both in Denmark and internationally.