Green

The main source of greenhouse gas emissions from an event is the transport of people and equipment. In 2023, the transport of festival-goers, goods and artistic crews represented the top 3 areas of emissions in our carbon footprint (respectively 56%, 13% and 10% of emissions).

WE LOVE GREEN’s actions to reduce the footprint of this item include:

Festival-goers: 0 car parks (except for PRM), timetables adapted to finish before the end of the last metro lines, large free cycle park, part of which is guarded, FF Vélo partnership, giant temporary Vélib’ terminal with 600 spaces to be installed for the first time in 2024.

Artists : joint work with other European festivals (Primavera in Barcelona, Northside and Roskidle in Denmark, Best Kept Secret in the UK) to optimise the routing of international headliners, organisational and financial support for train travel where possible, etc.

Service providers: choice of local service providers, rail freight test, pooling of product collection rounds for the 50 restaurants with 5 refrigerated lorries.

Teams: use of electric golfettes and bicycles to travel around the festival, logistics operations with cargo bikes

We work according to the principles of the circular economy in order to limit the production of waste and the waste of resources.

Reducing waste: 0 single-use plastic policy, no distribution of flyers, provision of returnable water bottles with Eau de Paris, returnable crockery for staff and artists, returnable crockery for the entire food court in 2024 after an initial test in 2023.

Reusing what already exists: reusing and reworking existing scenographic elements from year to year (e.g. work by the Rethorica studio exhibited in 2022, reused in 2023 for the Playground and in 2024 for the Think Tank; wooden panels from the Paralympic Day in October 2023), recovering furniture and materials from a network of partner structures to create new elements, donating furniture/materials/objects that we no longer use to associations or recycling centres.

Recovering and recycling waste that could not be avoided: separating and recovering 15 waste streams where possible, over-sorting bins and raising awareness of waste sorting through the AREMACS association, redistributing unsold food to people in precarious situations thanks to Linkee.

By 2023, 76% of the 137.5 tonnes of waste produced by the festival (including 87 tonnes of litter and urine) had been recycled.

WE LOVE GREEN has incorporated the principles of preserving natural spaces right from the start, first in the Parc de Bagatelle, then in the Bois de Vincennes. At each event, protective measures are put in place and applied by all the festival’s stakeholders:

• Double fencing of the site to protect the surrounding wooded areas from any intrusion by festival-goers. For 11 hectares occupied, 23 hectares are protected
• No motorised vehicles on the lawns of sports grounds (electric golf carts only)
• The ground surrounding the sites is protected by light decking. Motorised logistics vehicles can therefore only drive on these areas and on the tarmac roads of the wood.
• Distribution of leaflets prohibited
• Waste sorting systems installed throughout the festival site, in public and backstage areas, and in the surrounding area. Pocket ashtrays are distributed to all teams, artists and members of the public.
• During and after the event, rubbish will be collected and sorted, and a thorough clean-up will be carried out on the festival site and in the surrounding area, as far as the Château de Vincennes metro station.
• A green brigade of 220 volunteers is dedicated to sorting and raising awareness, under the supervision of a specialist service provider, the Aremacs association.
• Set-up designed to be smooth and spread out over a period of time to avoid evening and night-time operations and limit the impact of heavy traffic or night-time traffic on the biodiversity of the Bois (3 weeks of set-up for 3 days of festival).
• Ban on detonations and pyrotechnic effects such as fireworks during concerts. This clause is included in all offers made to artists and in artistic contracts.
• The festival uses sound levels below those set by the Sound Decree. These levels are included in all artistic contracts.
• Since its first edition in the Bois de Vincennes, WE LOVE GREEN has been working alongside the City of Paris to renaturalise the occupied site and its surroundings: creation of wetlands (ditches and a pond on the site), reseeding of the occupied land and neighbouring land (Plaine de Mortemart), etc.

In 2023, WE LOVE GREEN approached Ekodev to serve as a research ground for a pioneering scientific project that is unprecedented for a French festival: a study of the impact on biodiversity.

The study is supported by the Centre National de la Musique as part of its assistance with diagnostics for venues.

It is being carried out in cooperation with the City of Paris.

The study will take place over 3 years, from 2024 to 2026, and will measure the direct impact on the flora and fauna of the site occupied by the festival (the Belle Étoile sports fields in the Bois de Vincennes): birds, chiropterans, soil, small mammals and flora.

The team is made up of :

• Firms specialising in the environmental transition of companies and the creation of measurement and monitoring tools;
• Associate researchers at CESCO – Centre des Sciences de la Conservation (MNHN-CNRS-SU), biodiversity experts;
• Soil scientists;
• The WE LOVE GREEN festival, the subject of the study, is continuing its work as a laboratory for experimentation and the introduction of eco-responsible solutions and working methods for the cultural sector.

Read more.

Catering is an integral part of the festival.

• A 100% vegetarian festival for everyone: festival-goers, artists and staff, totalling 113,000 meals in 2023! During set-up and dismantling, the catering will be vegetarian 1 day out of 2. With the switch to 100% vegetarian catering in 2023, food will have gone from being the 2nd largest source of CO2e emissions in 2022 to the 5th largest in 2023.
• Selection of the 50 artisan restaurateurs through a call for applications, with a strict charter: seasonal, local products, at least half of which must come from sustainable or organic farming.
• Verification of compliance with the charter by Ecotable

Sustainable beverages: of the 35 references in 2023, 17 were AB certified.

Read more.

Every year, WE LOVE GREEN works as an energy innovation laboratory:

• Monitoring: records of all festival consumption with zoning
• Reducing consumption: limits on electrical power imposed on artist contracts (maximum number of kWh available for each stage, for lights and video), invoicing of restaurants and partners according to the actual consumption of their stands, etc.

Innovative, low-carbon energy mix: by 2023, the grid’s electricity mix will be 59% with a guaranteed 100% renewable contract, battery packs, 120 solar panels, a green-certified 100 kVA hydrogen generator and 2nd-generation biofuel generators made from green waste.

In order to limit the use of water resources, the festival is equipped with dry toilets and standing or sitting urinals. With 290,000 visits over 3 days, nearly 1,450,000 litres of drinking water are saved compared to a normal toilet system (5 litres/flush).

For self-service water fountains, there has been a year-on-year increase in the proportion of fountains with motion detection (instead of push buttons).

We are working to make WE LOVE GREEN a safe and inclusive space.

To find out more :

•  to find out more about risk prevention and reduction measures and the fight against sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, go to the bottom of the page.
• To find out about facilities to help disabled visitors to the venue, go to the practical information page.

Social issues are an integral part of the festival’s sustainability policy. To find out more about the festival’s committed content and awareness-raising initiatives (Think Tank, Positive Initiatives Village, presence of associations, calls to action), go to the talks page.