Bluegrass fest turning ever greener

In Telluride, fans find ways to stay in tune with Earth

John Lehndorff, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, June 16, 2007

It's almost impossible not to think about the environment when you're at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Snow-capped, tree-blanketed peaks with waterfalls surround the Town Park site where you sit for 12 hours of music a day in the southwestern Colorado mountain town.

The 34th edition, featuring bluegrass, Americana, rock, jazz fusion, folk and almost everything else, opens Thursday headlined by Counting Crows, Guster, Emmylou Harris, Los Lobos, Chick Corea and top pickers including Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer and Jerry Douglas.

The first inkling of "green" dawned in the early years of the festival when the promoters simply asked the attendees, the so-called Festivarians, to please pick up after themselves. They did and continue to do so.

As the event grew in international prestige, it started attracting sellout crowds near 10,000 people. The promoters, Lyons-based Planet Bluegrass, started to notice that, besides great music, Telluride was producing a Mount Evans of trash.

The problem, said Steve Szymanski, vice president of Planet Bluegrass since 1989, is that "nothing is easy in Telluride because everything has to be trucked out to Montrose or Grand Junction." The answer, at least in the 1990s, was to introduce recycling.

The first significant changes happened in 2002 when New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins signed on as the festival beer sponsor. "The company had a Sustainability Goddess - that really was her title - whose only job was to find ways to increase sustainability at the beer company," he said. "She had the knowledge and helped us get serious about it."

After an inventory of the festival's impact, Szymanski and company started making changes. In 2003, the event was wind-powered for the first time. Planet Bluegrass bought "credits" equal to the energy used by the festival. They increase the amount of wind-generated electricity that's pumped into the electric power grid, thereby lessening the amount of gas and coal used and carbon dioxide released.

A festivalwide composting/ recycling plan was introduced that set up stations, even backstage, manned by members of a Sustainable Festivation Crew.

"It was essential to have the stations manned so they could help everyone sort out what was compostable, recyclable and trash," Szymanski said. A farm only 16 miles from Telluride took all the compostables.

The next step, in 2004, was to turn more of the trash into compost by finding sources for cups and even water bottles made from cornstarch. The water bottles, filled by Biota in nearby Ouray, were introduced to the world at the 2004 festival.

By 2005 and with more research, he said, "we found that 95 percent of the festival's carbon came from travel. When you do an event that attracts people from across the country, you have to think about the travel, not just the energy used onsite." That year, all the travel by artists was offset by purchases of wind-power credits.

In 2007, the festival gets closer to its goal by purchasing 4.1 million kilowatt hours of renewable electricity to offset emissions from all travel to and from Telluride by staff, artists and audience. A letter sent to artists details the efforts made toward sustainability and suggests ways they can green their travel.

The number of water taps has been doubled so fans will fill reusable bottles, instead of tossing plastic ones. The festival mandates green paper and plastic products for vendors. Backstage food will include more locally sourced organic food, and the first biking contingent will trek in from Boulder.

There are always more environmental questions to answer. What's the impact of running the gondola for four days? What about the energy used by people staying in hotels and condos? Next year the backstage diesel generators will be run on biodiesel.

Then there are the beer cups, one of the biggest headaches the festival faces. "That cup thing has been going on forever. Even a compostable cup uses energy," Szymanski said. For now, the Festivarians have to pay $2 just for the cup, or bring one from previous years.

"Occasionally we get a cynic who thinks its hypocritical nonsense, but for the most part the reception is very positive. We try to say: 'You're a festivarian and this is what you do.' "

In the future, Szymanski said that Telluride will become even less carbon-ated. "It would be as if the event had never happened, as if the thousands of guests, artists and those working there never came."

Telluride Bluegrass Festival

• When and where: Thursday-June 24, Town Park, Telluride

• Cost: $60 single-day (Saturday sold out); $175 four-day

• Information: 303-823-0848; bluegrass.com

• Lineup:

Thursday: Chris Thile; Crooked Still; Avett Brothers; Jackie Greene; Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Darol Anger and Bryan Sutton; Emmylou Harris with John Starling; Counting Crows

Friday: Infamous Stringdusters; Mike Marshall and Hamilton de Holanda; Jerry Douglas Band; Chris Thile and How to Grow a Band; Guster; Béla Fleck and the Flecktones; Los Lobos

Saturday: Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile; John Cowan Band; Yonder Mountain String Band; Tony Rice with Alison Krauss and Union Station; Sam Bush Band; New Orleans Social Club

Sunday: Sparrow Quartet; Andy Statman; Peter Rowan and Tony Rice; Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman; Dougie MacLean; Chick Corea and Béla Fleck; Alison Krauss and Union Station with Jerry Douglas

For more information on sustainable music festivals:

• bluegrass.com/green

• ReverbRock.org

• AGreenerFestival.org

John Lehndorff has attended and written about the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for more than 26 years. Look for his reviews during the festival at RockyMountainNews.com; 303-954-5103; Lehndorffj@RockyMountainNews.com.