Celebratory and Sustainable? A Website Examination of the Sustainability Practices of Australian Festivals

Festivals are significant contributors to the visitor economy at local, regional and global scales. Regardless of their scale, festivals consume resources such as energy, water, land and food, and produce wastes in the form of wastewater/sewage, food scraps and garbage such as plastics, paper and cardboard, aluminium and glass. As such, every festival has an environmental footprint. However, it is only in the last decade or so that the environmental impacts of festivals and their concomitant levels of ecological sustainability have been of concern to organising bodies and participants. The study described in this paper examines the sustainability practices of a sample of Australian festivals through a systematic content/thematic analysis of their websites. Key questions to be explored are (i) to what extent do Australian festival organisers disclose information about sustainability on their websites? (ii) are there any discernible patterns across the sample concerning sustainability and festival type? (iii) what kind of information concerning sustainability practises is shared by these festivals and events on their websites? and (iv) what navigational pathways are required to find this information? The paper provides a snapshot of current practice in relation to sustainability and as such generates new understandings of, and insights into, the extent to which Australian festivals are engaging with sustainability. The findings provide a baseline from which to benchmark festivals as well as identify any patterns or trends across contemporary Australian festivals with respect to sustainability.