Coachella Goes Green-er

Coachella music festival enacted some new regulations and bonuses for attendees who made the extra effort to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

By Brie Roche Lilliott, staff writer

This past weekend, Indio, California hosted the annual Coachella Music and Arts Festival. Despite the scorching heat, over 25,000 dedicated music fans showed up to the event, as the event was sold out a few days before. Coachella has always made an effort to motivate the audience members to keep it clean, but this year they took it to a whole new level, with countless activities and contests to encourage everyone to go green.

Carpoolchella made its four-year return this year with the help from Global Inheritance. The guidelines were to gather up in carpool groups of four, decorate your car with a sign, paint, etc. saying “carpoolchella”, and come anytime before 2 pm on Sunday. Then, a secret Coachella employee would be scouting around the parking lots and campgrounds to look for the great decorations and giving brief interviews.

The 35 chosen winners recieved an array of prizes available, including VIP wristbands, “side-stage” wristbands, gift vouchers, and golf cart rides. One lucky contestant even had the opportunity to win a VIP entry to Coachella for life. It was an excellent way to get music-goers to conserve and travel in larger groups rather than taking multiple cars.

Another way to the program encouraged carpooling was the Ride Share, which allowed travelers without transportation to find a ride, and others could the chance to offer a ride. This wasn’t just an opportunity to meet fellow music fans, but to reach the four-person requirement for Carpoolchella.

In order to appeal to the DJing fans that attended, Coachella sponsored the Energy FACTory\’s Sweatshop Mixer, in cohorts with Global Inheritance. Contestants had the opportunity to DJ for hundreds of people at Coachella, as long as they had twelve willing friends to help. Those twelve had to use cranks, pulleys, seesaws, and wheels in order to power the turntables and DJ equipment, rather than electricity.

In the ridiculously hot temperatures, water is vital. But rather than spending $2 per bottle, the festival set up a few great ways to get your water for free (or cheaply at least!). First, you can purchase one of their plastic reusable Coachella bottles, and then endless water supply was available for free for the remainder of the weekend. The other option was their 10 for 1 program, in which for every ten plastic bottles you picked up from the ground, you could exchange it for one new bottle of water. Not only did it keep the field clean, but also  promoted recycling.

Coachella\’s various conservation promotions were not only admirable, but effective. Countless groups of people filled trash bags, wagons, and baskets with plastic bottles to recycle. I saw at least 50 cars with colorful “carpoolchella” designs decorating their windows. Their conservatione fforts improve each year, and with thousands of fans doing their part, Coachella festival is just another helpful contributor to the Green cause.