Our Sustainability Work
Department festival was dreamt up in 2016, it was our love for music and the desire to work together for a more sustainable future that drove us to create something special. We wanted to create a place for innovative electronic dance music, where Swedish and international acts meet all kinds of people regardless of what background they might have, ethnicity or sexuality, and together pursue an active sustainable magic experience.
As cornerstones we decided that:
* The festival organization built according to circular economy
* 100% vegan
* Representation on our stages as diverse as possible without musical compromises
* The festival strategically located to minimize our emissions
First of all, "Circular Economy" is a solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity, loss, waste and pollution. This demands the organization to have a circular mindset during the festival production process from A - Z.
We have improved throughout the years regarding the issues with re-use and to reduce our waste and we have now come quite far. Our main stage, entrance, signs, sawdust on the dance areas and cover material on our fences are all re-used more than one time which help reduce the waste sustainable to quite low figures. This is an ongoing struggle where we every year try new ways to re-use our material in a sustainable way.
When it comes to biodiversity we have chosen our location carefully resulting in a city park and the main area being under a bridge, where dance floors are on so-called "dead zones" where we have invested in sawdust from a local farmer to get a more inviting area for our visitors. We have made sure to take care of all the flowers in the park are kept safe from our production, since the festival is taking place during spring. We are also aiming to have a longer term cooperation with partners to help us work with local gardener at Långholmen for the coming years, to activate our work with Biodiversity.
The biggest and most crucial problem the world is facing now - the urgent climate issue and that we need to globally cut 50% of our carbon emission to 2030, according to UNEP and the Paris Climate Agreement.
In this matter the scientists have developed international measure standards and ways we can use to analyze and reduce our emission.
In 2019 we had our first year with complete CO2e measurements with scope 1, 2 and 3, which resulted in 55 tons of emission and 22,3 kg per visitor. During pandemic summers 2020 and 2021 we weren't allowed to make our usual festival with restrictions in place.
2022 Department made our second complete measurement resulting in only 16 tons of emission whereof 7,6 kg per visitor. Included in the measurements is the audience and artists travels, food and beverage and accommodation during the whole festival. To put this in context check these examples →
Every visitor at the Department represent 7,6 kg of the total carbon emission. The emissions per person includes all of our work to produce the festival: planning and office work over a year, digital and physical marketing, building the festival site with all our great partners and sponsors, electricity to run the event, artists travels, festival staffs travels, the food and drinks we sold, and how our very engaged audience traveled to the site and stayed over the weekend in the most climate effective way.
This last image explains why our emission was extremely low this year. We have to thank all our engaged visitors and that they decided to travel to Department in so many climate friendly ways!