Gasparilla Music Festival Expands Its Sustainability Program

The eighth-annual Gasparilla Music Festival, taking place Saturday and Sunday, March 9-10 in downtown Tampa, continues its longstanding, award-winning music sustainability program featuring deeper partnerships with Hillsborough County and HART to expand its positive impacts on the community.

This year the festival aims to reduce its use of single use plastics and the amount of generated waste that ends up going to the landfill. This will be achieved by eliminating straws, using carton water containers instead of plastic, and rolling out GMF's recycling, waste reduction and food waste composting initiative throughout the entire festival with highly-visible, dedicated waste stations.

"We are thrilled to be voted Tampa Bay's best festival every year, and we are equally proud of our award-winning, holistic sustainability program that continues to grow every year," said Taylor Ralph, Gasparilla Music Festival board member and chair of its Sustainability Committee. "Our food waste composting initiative with Whitwam Organics helps grow local, organic food for community organizations and local neighborhoods, our new partnership with HART allows all attendees to use mass transit to get to the festival, and we continue to work to ensure the festival is as carbon neutral as possible through impactful, win-win partnerships."

This year, Hillsborough County provided key support to move the festival's waste reduction and recycling initiatives forward with the provision of waste education stations, as well as hosting an outreach booth on site to assist attendees with any questions about recycling properly at home-another example of GMF's efforts making an impact beyond the festival's two days.

"The Gasparilla Music Festival continues to implement strategies to engage festival-goers, event vendors, and the local community in waste reduction and recycling efforts. Hillsborough County is excited to partner with the City of Tampa and GMF to provide a template for how other large events can also reduce their environmental impact while demonstrating the importance of incorporating environmental stewardship where we live, work, and play" said Hillsborough County Commissioner Mariella Smith.

New this year, GMF and HART have partnered to allow all festival attendees to ride any and all HART buses, the TECO streetcar and HART Paratransit to the festival for FREE. Earlier in the year, GMF partnered with multiple community organizations and foundations to create the Art on HART bus, a custom-designed art installation wrapped on a HART Bus. It will be running on Florida Avenue on HART's Route 1-going from USF, through Seminole & Tampa Heights, and into Downtown Tampa-getting GMF attendees to the festival in style. GMF also provides free bike valet on site, courtesy of Two Wheel Bike Valet, keeping your bike locked and safe while you enjoy the live music and local food of GMF. The City of Tampa will be on-hand to recycle all cardboard, cartons, plastic, aluminum and glass used during the festival while also sharing their message of 'Recycle Right.'

In addition to all on-site efforts, We Are Neutral will work with GMF to estimate total carbon footprint, and We Are Neutral's locally generated carbon offsets will be utilized to ensure GMF is a carbon neutral event. The offsets are generated from regional energy and water efficiency and tree-planting programs that the Gainesville-based company creates through its community programs. GMF's growing signature community outreach initiative, Recycled Tunes, is also a great example of a win-win solution, aligned with environmental commitment. The program collects used musical instruments from the community in exchange for tickets to the festival. The collected instruments are refurbished by a local music store, and then donated to local Title 9 schools and other music programs to expand music education and arts opportunities for youth.

"GMF continues to find ways to use our mission to enrich lives, while generating positive outcomes for our community throughout the year-this important effort helps make our non-profit more sustainable as an organization." says Ralph.

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