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(record scratch)
♪ Clean up ♪
♪ Let's help put our things away ♪
- Lightning In A Bottle actually started
as a birthday party.
We had been going to some other festivals.
We were kind of turned off by all the litter
you get on the ground and just kind of
people's mentality, where they didn't care
and they thought, "Because I'm at festival
"I can just throw my water bottle on the ground
"and it doesn't matter because someone's
"paid to go pick it up."
We made the decision early on that we were
just gonna go the complete opposite direction.
♪ Clean up ♪
We just realized that it's about baby steps,
it's about the process, it's about the little things
that we can do to lessen our footprint.
But we recognize that we're not green, it's a festival.
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But we know it's also our responsibility
to lessen our footprint and do what we can
for the environment, and also educating people
as to how they can live their lives
in a more sustainable way.
- Sustainability is implemented at LIB
because it's an integrated part of the planning process.
- The fact that the production is willing to do it,
and they are focused on it, and they have a dedicated team,
that's step one.
We work really hard to divert as much material
from the landfill as possible through waste reduction.
- [Eric] Low input LED lighting, biodiesel generators,
and we integrate solar in ways when we can
when it's cost-effective.
- [Caleb] Donating all of the leftover tents
or any usable camping gear.
We source separate all sorts of waste materials
through our cardboard stream, our scrap metal stream,
through communal recycling and through organic compost.
All that is composted locally and used for farms
around Bakersfield.
- [Eric] Music festivals are always a launching platform,
and a place to wake up for people.
Everyone's supposed to go out into their
various corners of the world after that
and use that new knowledge.
- People are already going through
transformative experiences.
They're outside of their comfort zone,
they're forced to do all sorts of things
that they wouldn't normally do.
People text me like, "I didn't even think about this
"until you taught me about this.
"I wasn't even thinking about the things I'm buying
"or how much packaging is coming with this,"
or whatever it might be.
- The educational component is huge for us,
and wellness, whether it's yoga and meditation
or different movement workshops.
This is more than just a party.
There's always an option to do that,
but there's a lot of hours in the day,
and when you have five-day event,
having all of these different workshop areas
and classrooms and educational components to it
is one of the more rewarding elements
that we can offer, because that's what inspires change.
- The vision behind the Learning Kitchen
was to empower festival-goers to teach them
how to nurture and nourish themselves
through plant-based cooking classes,
using local, organic foods, and that way
they're not buying pre-packaged frozen fast food,
all these things that are very consumption-heavy
and wasteful.
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- I know some other festivals start to
bring some of these initiatives into these events,
and others don't, and it's understandable.
It's a lot of work.
It's hard to survive in this industry
just by selling tickets and keeping costs
down as much as possible, and when you look at
sustainability, a lot of people are just like,
"Oh, it would be great to do that,
"but it's more money, it's more manpower,
"it's a line item that we're just gonna cut."
And it is unfortunate that is does take extra effort
to actually go the extra mile, but if you're
committed to it, you just do it, and it is what it is,
and you find ways to save in other areas
or you find ways to make it work.
- [Caleb] If we don't do this now, then we're just
destroying ourselves in the future.
That's one of the greatest costs, I think.
It's much more than about money.
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