Concerts

Get ready for reusable cups at concerts and festivals

The amount of food and beverage garbage left over at the end of a concert or festival is immense. Live Nation recognizes that this isn’t exactly good for the environment, so they’re looking for ways to fix the situation. The company’s goal is “zero-waste concerts.”

Okay, so what can be done? Adopting common restaurant practice, for one.

Live Nation will soon introduce reusable cups at venues and concerts. Basically, you’ll buy your beer or whatever, drink it, and then toss the cup into a recycling-style bin. The cups will then be washed and used again. It might sound a bit weird at first, but this is how it works at restaurants, right?

According to Variety, the Live Nation project is the result of an investment in a company called Turn Systems, which says it has the reusable cup thing figured out. Turn cups can be reused up to 100 times before they wear out. Live Nation says that Turn cups will eliminate the need for at least one million single-use cups.

There’s also a deal with Liquid Death canned water to help cut down on the use of five million plastic water bottles. Live Nation also uses plenty of biodegradable/compostable/recyclable packaging for food items.

To be fair, these sorts of systems have been in use in Europe for years. It’s about time that North Americans got on board with reducing single-use plastic items.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 40245 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

One thought on “Get ready for reusable cups at concerts and festivals

  • Ruins

    They were doing this a year ago. Not sure beyond that because, luckily, I don’t have to deal with those (&^%^(&%^s much. I had a horrible time at that particular show before I even GOT to the show and it didn’t end until I left. I had a great seat ruined by jerks with better seats who just had to stand in front of my view (corner aisle with nobody behind me or to my right –backstage area) with no workaround and a bouncer who just had to be a jerk and wouldn’t let me lean AT ALL and it was my second show back after two years of withdrawals. Luckily my first show back was amazing so I can count that as something on the plus side of the balance sheet. As always *^&% LN/TM ………..and their propaganda 15 dollar cokes in reusable cups!

    And the canned water is two steps BELOW the boxed water. Yucko. I thought the canned water was weird but cool. Getting water service on Alaska Airlines smaller plane service to California recently was a joke. They watered us. Seriously. No pretzels, no snacks. No proper drinks unless you paid. Boxes of bad, sterilized water from a company (Alaska Airlines) who USED to give you free meals *and* snacks and coffee (french roast!) and cool (but super silly) locally sourced spring water that was gimmicky–oxygenated or something, but it tasted good!

    Side note:
    So far in the second half of my concert season, I’ve had three shows (as of late August) moved to 2023. that’s 3/12 through October.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.