It’s So Easy Being Green

If you’ve been to a large festival or sporting event, you know how quickly the litter piles up. When one person throws their trash on the ground, it makes it easier for someone else to do so, and then another person, and then another, until the ground is covered in empty plastic water bottles and the place looks like a landfill by dawn. We’re not super down with that, and we know EDC Headliners aren’t either.

To remedy this issue, Insomniac teamed up with Global Inheritance, an environmental awareness organization that implements earth-friendly initiatives at festivals across the United States. With its TRASHed Recycling Store, attendees can walk away with rad prizes in exchange for empty plastic water bottles and cans they collect from festival grounds. Since 2004, the store has collected more than 13 million bottles, cans and biodegradable cups at the biggest festivals in North America.

The TRASHed store made its EDC debut this past June. And guess what? The fans rocked it.

Altogether, more than 52,000 bottles were turned in during the three-day festival. In exchange, participants received EDC tote bags, T-shirts, refillable water bottles, hats, limited-edition vinyl and big-ticket prizes including headphones, Insomniac event tickets, backpacks and camping supplies. The program was such a success that Global Inheritance ran out of prizes by the end of the weekend.

They see that it’s easy and place value on it because they’ve had a positive experience. Then they want to do it all the time.

“Bringing recycling to life and doing it in a fun, positive way—people all of a sudden look at it differently,” says Global Inheritance Executive Director Eric Ritz. “They see that it’s easy and place value on it because they’ve had a positive experience. Then they want to do it all the time.”

The most popular prize of the weekend was the EDC tote bag, which went for just three water bottles. More than a thousand totes were given away, and people who received the bags were encouraged to use them to collect more recycling, simultaneously helping to keep the place clean while earning additional prizes and raising awareness about Global Inheritance and festival maintenance in general.

“It’s like the domino effect,” says Ritz. “When people start dropping bottles and cans on the grounds, everyone follows suit. The fact that people see their peers picking them up, they think that they should look for a recycling bin. They’re more cautious.”

Refillable water bottles were also a popular prize. In fact, when the EDC merchandise stand momentarily ran out of bottles to sell, Headliners attempted to buy them from Global Inheritance. Reps from the organization told these people that while they couldn’t pay cash, they could go pick up items off the ground and exchange them. “Some people were kind of frustrated in the beginning,” Ritz says, “but then they realized it was cool and went out and collected 60 bottles and cans, brought them back, and got the refillable bottle they wanted.”

Ritz says the ultimate goal is to have everyone at the festival using these refillable water bottles and the corresponding water refill stations, as it would dramatically cut down on waste. He recognizes thought, that at an event where hydration is paramount, the use of single-use water bottles is inevitable. Finding them on the ground, however, doesn’t have to be.

“People are always pessimistic that there are tons of bottles and cans on the ground, but that happens at any event. By giving people an opportunity to collect these things over the course of the night, the festival just gets cleaner and cleaner.”

Global inheritance sorted and bagged all of the recycling they collected and handed it over to representatives from the Speedway to be properly disposed of. And even though the organization joined the festival at the last minute and thus did not have a well publicized presence, they consider their first EDC appearance a big-time success and are eager to see what they can do at the festival next year with more lead time.

“We had never been at a festival environment like that, where the hours were dusk to dawn,” Ritz says, “so we didn’t really know what the reaction would be like. It was really cool to see people so excited about recycling.”

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