Festival fever
Image: Wendy Wei/Pexels
June has been a big month for music fans across Europe, with festivals aplenty happening all over.
In recent years, beverage cans have become more and more of a staple for events like these. Not only do they look great and create a fun visual accompaniment for festival-goers, but their infinite recyclability eclipses all other packaging options.
Not-for-profit, Every Can Counts (ECC), has of course been present at many European music festivals this summer, with its ambassadors carrying can recycling bins on their back, in addition to various can art/poster type installations, and bins for consumers to interact with, some acting as a voting station. At Download festival in the UK, the bins were labelled Metallica and Slipknot, so people could choose which of the bands they liked best, producing a visible result of the winner. The cans could be flipped into the bins using the bin’s can end – have a look here.
At Download, ECC shared that over 40,000 cans were recycled in exchange for its rewards, including its ‘Metal Never Dies’ T-shirts and the ‘Download20’ keyring made from recycled aluminium.
All this – coupled with the uplift in UK recycling as seen in figures released this week by Alupro – reinforces metal’s strength and the crucial part it has to play in the circular economy. Festivals can be notorious for the amount of waste they produce, and the amount of cleaning up needed by volunteers every year, but it goes to show that with the right packaging choices and recycling initiatives, as well as education, clear and ample signage, waste prevention on a mass-scale is possible.
A lot of people, including myself, have had FOMO (the fear of missing out) this summer, seeing friends and family attend the various music festivals on. Maybe next year I’ll have photos of the cans and recycling schemes I see. Which festival(s) to go to, is the question..!
Do send in your ‘can snaps’ if you or any of the cans you produce/work on have featured at any festivals this month, and we can share on our social media.
- Alex Rivers (she/her), CanTech International editor
Keep in touch via email: [email protected] Twitter: @CanTechIntl or LinkedIn: CanTech International magazine.
