This year’s Firefly Music Festival held in ‘The Woodlands’ of Dover International Speedway promises to be a ‘can’t-miss’ event for music lovers everywhere and is expected to draw over 85,000 people per day over the course of four days.

The music festival’s tagline; ‘The East Coast’s Premier Music Experience’, pretty much says it all. It is produced by Red Frog Events and was first held in 2012, with 48 performances held over 3 days. Over 70,000 of the attendees take advantage of the ‘camping experience’ that the festival offers at ‘The Westwoods’ and ‘The Clearing’ campgrounds.

Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon and The Killers are the headliners for this year’s Firefly festival which has over 110 bands scheduled to perform between June 18 and June 22.  According to the ‘2014 Economic Impact (Press) Release’, last year’s Firefly festival contributed $68 million to the regional economy and created 579 full-time jobs. It also created a lot of trash.

Firefly Music Festival promotes itself as a sustainable and environmentally friendly festival. Waste Masters Solutions worked with Red Frog Events at last year’s Firefly Festival to reduce the amount of trash that would end up in a landfill.

According to Steve Masterson, CEO of Waste Master’s Solutions, “As a result of our strong partnership and hard-work, the festival saw a recycling rate of 72% over the event days. That is quite impressive considering our initial goal of 25% and the 14% the year before without Waste Master Solutions.”

The Waste Data Speaks for itself:

Festival:

• Recycling- 51.46%
• Trash- 20.22%

Offsite- Camping

• Trash- 309.16 tons
• Recycling- 8.18 tons

Recycling Benefits to Save the World:

• Tree Saving Benefit: 969 Mature Trees- Enough timber for 12,005,910 sheets of newspaper.
• Gallons of oil benefit: 34,410 Gallons of Oil- enough energy to heat and cool more than 170 homes for one entire year.
• Gallons of gasoline benefit: 720 Gallons of Gasoline- Enough gasoline for Americans to drive more than 20,160 miles.
• Gallons of water benefit: 210,000 Gallons of Water-enough water to meet the daily fresh water needs of 2,800 Americans
• KW/HR of electricity benefit: 296,000 KW/HRS of electricity- Enough power for the annual energy needs of 25 homes
• Landfill airspace savings: 642 (cu yd.)- Enough airspace to meet the annual needs of 824 Americans.

Waste Masters Solutions, a commercial environmental solutions company in Delaware and Red Frog Events will be partnering up again this year to ensure that the event is as environmentally friendly as possible. If you go to the festival, be sure to take advantage of all the recycling containers in order to do your part in reducing the event’s carbon footprint.

“Red Frog is very interested in the environmental impact of this event,” says Masterson. “They’re a real young, progressive organization with progressive ideas, and we want to try to take this 85,000-person event for four days and see if we can minimize the carbon footprint.”—Commercial Environment Solutions