To celebrate Earth Day 2020, the California Roots Music and Arts Festival is proud to announce their expansive greening initiatives and partnerships for 2020. The 11th annual festival has been rescheduled, with 100% of the lineup intact, to take place October 9-11 at the Monterey County Fair and Event Center. For over a decade, Cali Roots has managed to lead the festival market in sustainability with impressive greening initiatives and partnerships that has garnered recognition as an "Outstanding Green Event" from Fest X and press accolades about their greening efforts from Pollstar, Medium, and Festival Squad.
California Roots Music & Arts Festival is dedicated to incorporating sustainability onsite and into their core daily business operations. Amy Sheehan, operations manager for Cali Roots, proudly explains the brand's mission stating, "We pledge to reduce our impact on the environment by aligning ourselves with other like-minded organizations, making earth-wise choices regarding the products we purchase, promoting environmental awareness to our fans, staff & artists, & continuing to set the bar higher each year in our commitment to sustainability."
2020 greening partners include Blue Strike Environmental,
California Green Business Network, Green Pedal Courier,
Redwood Forest Foundation Inc (RFFI), REVERB, Save Our Shores, and TripZero.
Cali Roots' partnership with Blue Strike Environmental has helped with waste diversion to create a successful program by creating top tier policies and a sustainable framework for the festival. By implementing simple changes like compostable dining ware, to elimination of single use cups and food waste diversion programs,
California Roots has successfully eliminated almost all landfill waste generated. Alex Baxter from Blue Strike adds, "Blue Strike makes it fun and user-friendly for Cali Roots fans to dispose correctly by placing Green Team
Ambassadors at high volume disposal areas to engage with fans on what waste is compost or recycling. These ambassadors are often very similar to the very folks who attend the festival. Music festival fans are among the most receptive audience to sustainability programs. The environment is a shared entity that festival-goers do not take for granted due to the inherent closeness that can be found from literally camping on-site for three or four days. The music festival-goer demographic is the generation of change. They catalyze the change they want to see in a community and go out of their way to take part in waste reduction programs, riding a bike or skateboard over driving, procuring local art, food or music, etc. These aspects are all important to
California Roots and drive a successful event for positive change."
In 2017, Cali Roots introduced their "Redwood Pass," a partnership with
Redwood Forest Foundation Inc (RFFI), which is their unique take on the VIP experience. The most compelling part is that for each pass sold, two redwoods were planted. In the first year 800 new redwoods were planted. As of 2020, 7,400 redwoods have been planted! Lin Morgan Barrett, Community Development Director for RFFI mentions, "The
Redwood Forest Foundation treasures our partnership with
California Roots. From 2017 through 2020, Cali Roots and the
Redwood Passholders have planted 7,400 redwoods in our Usal
Redwood Forest and other northern
California forests. Redwoods forests are
climate champions and Cali Roots has taken the lead in the entertainment sector by generously supporting large scale tree-planting, which is now recognized as one of the leading natural solutions to climate change. This year, Amy Sheehan came with her team to actually help plant redwoods in our forest!" There are some
fantastic photos from the day here.
Cali Roots has been working with environmental nonprofit REVERB and their #RockNRefill
Campaign since 2015 to completely eliminate single-use plastic bottles at the festival. The #RockNRefill Campaign, a partnership between REVERB and Nalgene, offers music fans free water stations and custom designed reusable water bottles at concerts, festivals, and venues as an alternative to single-use bottles. 100% of the donations for the #RockNRefill bottles support nonprofit and environmental causes, raising over $20,000 for local nonprofits at Cali Roots.
Communication Manager of REVERB, Chris Spinato expresses, "REVERB is excited to continue our partnership with
California Roots in 2020 and build on 4 years of creating positive impact for people and the planet. We've found a kindred partner in Cali Roots and love working with a festival that's truly dedicated to doing the right thing for the planet."
Other notable conscious efforts include the use of only compostable greenware and a cool bike and skate valet further deepening Cali Roots' commitment to greening initiatives as they celebrate Earth Day (April 22) and every day.
The festival has impressive numbers to showcase how their environmental partnerships and initiatives have already made an impact.
- Diverted 500,000+ single use plastic cups & bottles through our Steel Pint & REVERB's Rock n' Refill Programs
- Sold over 40,000 multi-use steel pint cups & Nalgene bottles
- Enhanced local vineyards with 50,000 lbs of composted food waste
- Collected 86 tons of recyclables via our partnership with Blue Strike Environmental
- By 2020, planted 7,400 Redwood tree seedlings on behalf of our Redwood (VIP) ticket holders with RFFI
- Offset over 12 million pounds of carbon over our 4 year partnership with TripZero
- Raised over $11,000 for Save Our Shores & REVERB's Rock n' Refill Program
- Parked 3,500 skateboards at our free, onsite Bike & Skate Valet run by Green Pedal Courier
- Conducted a festival-wide clean up with Save Our Shores, focusing on collecting cigarette butts & education about the path they can take directly to the ocean via storm drains
- Donated 1,300 pounds of leftover food from catering, hospitality & vendors to the Monterey County Food Bank
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