Save the Planet: Buy Stuff!

You know you wish you were here
You wish you were here.

Funny how capitalism ruins things, even when they set out to do something swell. The Treasure Island Music Festival is a fine example. Not that the fest was ruined as a whole, but their efforts at environmentalism left the stale taste of unfiltered Oakland water in my mouth. They made big efforts to make the show green. Instead of trash bins, you had landfill, recycling and compost bins, with tips on what goes where. Kudos for that. But in other respects their need to be profitable got in the way of their stewardship to mama earth.

Firstly, I was irritated by their transit plan. There was no parking on Treasure Island. Instead one was supposed to take a free shuttle from the ATT Center. The problem with that is that the ATT Center is not on BART. Anyone (such as myself) who doesn’t live in San Francisco is expected to take a one hour BART ride to the city, catch a short cab ride to the shuttle and then shuttle back over the bridge I just came from. So I’m expected to commit to a trip that would likely take upwards of two hours for a destination that is twelve minutes drive from my house? No thanks. I suppose the folks planning the event live in the city and don’t think much of us “bridge and tunnel” types. Their site offered no advice as to how to get there if you weren’t coming from the city. We took a taxi there and hopped on the all-nighter bus to get ho me. Apparently some others had the same idea because the taxi stand had more people waiting than you can fit into your average Mission dive bar. The festival bragged about having zero-emissions buses but when someone who BARTs and bikes to get around has to take a cab just to get to your show, you’ve erred on the green master-plan somewhere.

But this is an understandable problem, considering they are dealing with an island in the middle of the Bay. Their plan to get rid of bottled water on the other hand offered far more reason for me to make my indignant face. A big part of their green plan was not selling bottled water at the festival. We were encouraged to bring our own sealed bottles into the site. I suppose this was to keep people from smuggling liquor in and out of the premises, otherwise I can’t imagine why I couldn’t bring an unsealed, empty bottle and refill it there. So instead of using a container I already had at home, I bought water to take into the fest. It defeats the point of not selling bottled water if I have to buy bottled water at CVS. Then when we get inside, we check out the “refilling stations.” Here they are charging three dollars to refill your water bottle or one dollar to refill the metal canisters they are selling at the festival. These little mementos cost fifteen bucks. So folks who didn’t bring their own water are encouraged to shell down a wad of cash to buy a metal water bottle that they probably don’t need and likely won’t keep after the festival so they can

use less plastic for the next two days. What a blow to consumerism!

OK, I’m through kvetching. The Treasure Island Music Festival is still the coolest music fest I’ve ever been to.

More details on the greatness to follow!

4 thoughts on “Save the Planet: Buy Stuff!”

  1. This is absolutely disgusting, among the worst things I have heard in a long time.
    The stuff about the water bottles, not your blog.
    I really enjoy your blog, and am happy to see an update after so long.

    Green washing is one thing, but trying to look green by not selling bottled water – and then requiring guest to buy bottled water… I can’t keep thinking about it. I’m going to be sick.

    One thing I do have to mention though: Oakland (along with all of EBMUDs water) has consistently been shown to have far superior quality to most municipal water supplies in the world, as well as superior to a majority of bottled water brands (in terms of contaminants mainly, but also taste, smell, and mineral content).
    If yours needs to be filtered, its most likely due to the pipes in your building.

  2. This is absolutely disgusting, among the worst things I have heard in a long time.
    The stuff about the water bottles, not your blog.
    I really enjoy your blog, and am happy to see an update after so long.

    Green washing is one thing, but trying to look green by not selling bottled water – and then requiring guest to buy bottled water… I can’t keep thinking about it. I’m going to be sick.

    One thing I do have to mention though: Oakland (along with all of EBMUDs water) has consistently been shown to have far superior quality to most municipal water supplies in the world, as well as superior to a majority of bottled water brands (in terms of contaminants mainly, but also taste, smell, and mineral content).
    If yours needs to be filtered, its most likely due to the pipes in your building.

  3. This sort of “painless green” is cropping up more and more these days, the idea being that we can all just slightly tweak the way we live, use a hemp shopping bag, and voila! through the magic of “green living” the water will run cleaner and the fish (which aren’t going to be around much longer) won’t been swimming thermometers.

    It may be the height of cynicism, but I think the environmental movement is being set back by this “green” industry. We still aren’t willing to make hard decisions about population control and resource management, and when we do make these decisions, they won’t be fair or just. The only comfort I find in this is that this just seems to be another chapter in evolution for a species that thinks itself exempt from nature.

  4. This sort of “painless green” is cropping up more and more these days, the idea being that we can all just slightly tweak the way we live, use a hemp shopping bag, and voila! through the magic of “green living” the water will run cleaner and the fish (which aren’t going to be around much longer) won’t been swimming thermometers.

    It may be the height of cynicism, but I think the environmental movement is being set back by this “green” industry. We still aren’t willing to make hard decisions about population control and resource management, and when we do make these decisions, they won’t be fair or just. The only comfort I find in this is that this just seems to be another chapter in evolution for a species that thinks itself exempt from nature.

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