Phish Reduces Water Bottle Consumption at Festival 8 With Innovative Program

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Nick Chambers in Food+Drink, Living, Sports+Recreation

A crowd of 40,000 surrounds the stage at Phish Festival 8, Indio, California (Photo: Nick Chambers)

If you’ve ever stuck around after an open air rock show and witnessed the carnage that remains, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that the amount of plastic disposable water bottles left on the ground is staggering. Really, try it some time. Not only will you be able to relax after the show and avoid waiting in line at the exit, it will be a lesson in waste management.

Trey Anastasio and Paige McConnell of Phish at Festival 8 (Photo: Tim Hurst)

Phish has tried to address this problem in an aggressive way with their innovative reusable water bottle program. At the recent 3-day Phish Festival 8 in Indio, California—attended by more than 40,000 people—if you had bought the $10 collectible Phish bottle you could refill it for free, or if you wanted to use your own bottle it cost you one buck for each fill.

“We’re doing our very best to abandon individual disposable water bottles backstage and in the front of the house,” said Matt Beck, Touring Director for Phish’s charitable organization, The WaterWheel Foundation. “We have refillable water programs for the fans on the concert grounds and all of crew have been issued water bottles and we use refillable water stations back stage as well.”

Indeed, at Festival 8 I noticed a much bigger push than I’ve seen before to get people to either use their own refillable water bottles or buy a collectible one and reuse it for the entire festival. The scale of the endeavor was truly impressive considering the number people there.

And, while all of that is clearly a great idea and well-intentioned, when it came to implementation I found that there were some major hiccups.

Phish Festival 8 at Empire Polo Club, Indio, California (Photo: Tim Hurst)

The wait for refilling your water bottle was frequently a half hour or more—especially during the day when it was hot and demand was high. This bottleneck caused fans to skip the water lines and buy disposable bottles of water even though they had an empty reusable bottle. It also encouraged people to stay dehydrated.

And, although the water filling staff would fill up your empty Nalgene, Sigg or whatever other durable reusable water bottle, if you had an empty disposable water bottle, you weren’t allowed to refill it. I guess I understand the intention behind this choice—wanting to encourage people to buy durable reusable water bottles—but if somebody’s already bought a disposable bottle and they are trying to refill it, that’s one less disposable that gets immediately thrown away, right?

The fact that the water was only free for people who had bought the $10 collectible bottle rubbed me the wrong way the whole weekend. If what you really want to do is get rid of disposable water bottles altogether, you would let everybody refill their bottles for free regardless of the type of bottle, and not even sell disposable water bottles at the venue.

Phish’s reusable water bottle program is a great start, but it could easily be a flawless program with a few minor modifications:

Provide free water to everyone with a reusable bottle—as they have begun to do at the Bonnaroo Music Festival—including folks who brought in disposable water bottles to reuse.
Unstaff the water lines and let people fill up their own bottles. Leave only a skeleton crew there to change water jugs as they empty and make sure nobody’s doing anything they shouldn’t (such as tipping over jugs).
Make more water available, especially during times when demand is high such as during the hot part of the day.

Even with all these critiques—and having been to a lot of Phish festivals—Festival 8 marked a turning point for the band in terms of trying to lessen the environmental impact of touring. Hopefully the band will use the experience—and suggestions from folks like me—and make disposable water bottle carnage a thing of the past.

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Nick Chambers is the editor of Gas 2.0

Tags:

music, phish, reusable water bottle, sustainability, water, water bottle

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8 Responses to “ Phish Reduces Water Bottle Consumption at Festival 8 With Innovative Program ”

Becky

07. Nov, 2009

I’m totally with you….refusing to fill disposable bottles and only giving the free refills to folks who paid $10 for the fancy keepsake seems a little counterproductive. I love that it’s a step in the right direction, though!

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Leigh

07. Nov, 2009

Perhaps you and I were at different festival’s but I didn’t spend more then 5 minutes in line to fill up my water bottle at Festival 8 (and I had to buy a $25 bottle since the $10 were sold out at the time I bought mine). I also saw at every stand I went to filling up plastic disposable bottles for anyone that brought one. I think its great to give suggestions, but don’t paint such a bad picture of something that is so positive and please double check your facts in the future.

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- Nick Chambers
  
  08. Nov, 2009
  
  Leigh, is there really any need to be snarky Perhaps you’re the lucky type? Every line I was in, with the exception of the one time I went to get water during the middle of one of the late sets, I had to wait at least 15 minutes. When I went to get water during the day, the lines were at least 30 minutes long. When I went to get water during the acoustic set, I had to wait 40 minutes. I went to 5 different water sites over the course of the weekend. When I was in line during the acoustic set, I had a conversation with 6 other people who also said they had waited a long time in the water lines over the course of the weekend. During that conversation all of those people had also experienced or seen people not being allowed to refill their disposable water bottles for the $1 price. I did hear from other people that there was some variability in how the water staff dealt with refilling non-collector reusable water bottles and that some folks were charged a buck while others were allowed to fill for free. I never saw anyone being allowed to fill up plastic disposable bottles for the $1 price, and based on my conversations with others in the lines that seemed to be a running concern. Maybe you were the one who experienced the exception? It seems that there was indeed a large amount of variability in the way the situation was dealt with at the different water lines and with different staff—which in and of itself is a problem with the system.
  
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Andrea Sue

09. Nov, 2009

I bought the $10 bottle and was only able to fill up once. The next time i tried, they gave me a 12oz disposable bottle because they said they had run out. IRRITATING!!! and in 90 degree weather, it is silly to charge a bunch of people for water who are drinking booze and participating in other dehydrating activities. i don’t see how charging for the water decreased waste.

but luckily, that was my only complaint about the weekend. hot damn i’m still smiling over it all!

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- Nick Chambers
  
  09. Nov, 2009
  
  I couldn’t agree more about the still smiling part! Was a great fest. I hadn’t heard about them running out of water, but clearly the logistical kinks need to be worked out.
  
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TomP

09. Nov, 2009

Great article! Great to hear such positive news on Ford’s vision and specifically the Fusion Hybrid.

This comment was originally posted on Gas 2.0

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