Movin’ On: Sustainable Changes in Music Festivals

Hey everyone! My name is Allie and I’ve been interning for REVERB this spring and summer.

I’m a junior at Pennsylvania State University who found my passion for music more recently, being my freshman year of college. The first club I got involved in my first year at Penn State was Movin’ On Music Festival. Prior to going into it, I thought that the music industry would be a cool profession, but never thought it was actually something I could do – it was just a far-off dream. Little did I know that by becoming involved in Movin’ On, I would find an industry that I want to be a part of for the rest of my life (and what led me to REVERB).

For some context, Movin’ On Music Festival is an annual student-run music festival at Penn State that happens on the last day of the spring semester. As one of the top five largest student-run music festivals in the nation, and a Penn State tradition, Movin’ On is a free celebration intended to wish off all graduating students who are “movin’ on” from their time at Penn State. The festival has developed significantly over the past 49 years, with us bringing in musicians such as Jack Harlow, COIN, Fitz and the Tantrums, Fall Out Boy, and many more.

Check out the story of sustainability at Movin’ On:

Now, I could go on and on about everything I love about Movin’ On, but the biggest accomplishment in my eyes is being a part of their Sustainability Team. This team’s efforts have been led by Director of Operations, Bridie Lawall (who is a past REVERB intern!). For the past two years, Bridie has ensured the festival is a 100% recyclable event. Some ways she has helped this goal happen has been through working with campus organizations to ensure there’s a water buggy throughout the entirety of the festival and providing fun hands-on activities for attendees to learn about sustainability.

This past year, we had carnival themed activities for attendees that were led by the festival’s team up with PSU EcoReps. Some of the incentives included winning a free tote bag featuring the 2024 lineup, which was given out to encourage the usage of reusable bags. The next biggest way we get attendees conscious about their sustainable practices is through providing a water buggy during the event. Movin’ On encourages people to bring their own reusable water bottles to use at the refill station, which in turn helps the festival eliminate the excessive use of single-use plastic water bottles.

All in all, incorporating some of these initiatives during the festival has proven to help lower plastic use and encourage sustainable practices. Some of the smaller ways that we promote sustainable practices also include ensuring that there are separate trash and recycling bins scattered throughout the festival grounds and doing trash sweeps at several points during the show, too.

Now, you can’t expect an event to be 100% recyclable without putting in the hard work, right?!

For the Sustainability Team, the most significant role we have is our post-show trash sortation. As a team, we get into our personal protective equipment (PPE), collect all of the trash and recycling bags scattered throughout the grounds, and bring them back to the tent where we sort through every single trash bag into separate recyclables and non-recyclables. This is part of Movin’ On’s effort to create an event where no recyclable items end up in a landfill.

I’ll be honest, it’s hard (and sometimes disgusting) work, but quite possibly the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. For some context, this year the team collected 853.3 pounds of total trash, and ended up sorting/re-bagging those contents into 290 pounds of recycling and 563.3 pounds of trash.

Although the sustainability efforts that have been implemented within Movin’ On are still incredibly young, we have been making huge strides in the past two years. The success we’ve seen shows that with some hard work and passion, music festivals big and small can make sustainable changes to how they run their show.

A lot of people, including my past self, may not realize that sustainability doesn’t always have to come with a hefty price tag. Through my experiences with sustainability in music, I’ve learned that some of the biggest changes can come with finding yourself face to face with the enemy, which is the overconsumption and waste of materials such as plastics and other forms of trash. I used to think that only large-name music festivals like Lollapalooza could incorporate a sustainability program into their millions of dollars budget, but through my experience at a smaller scale festival like Movin’ On I’ve learned that simply isn’t true.

Smaller scale student-run music festivals are common at universities. Schools like USC, Northwestern, and UC San Diego have annual music festivals just like Penn State, but there should be more of an awareness and effort when it comes to greening these events. For a lot of events, there may be minor actions being taken like providing various waste bins, but at the end of the day it comes down to the students and professionals putting on the event.

One of the coolest experiences I’ve had as a REVERB intern has been to help guide the creation of a sustainability program at Brown University’s Spring Weekend music festival. Students within the festival’s team noticed the waste being created at their event, took responsibility and decided that there should be a program implemented that would allow for their event to be kinder to the planet. Seeing this awareness and having the opportunity to use my personal experience in sustainability to help other schools has been a huge accomplishment of my career so far, and I hope that other schools start following suit. I know that for Movin’ On, sustainability truly is a factor that’s just as important as anything else that goes into the planning and execution of the festival.

With that being said, I’m proud to be able to call Movin’ On my second family and to know that we’re all on the same page when it comes to ensuring sustainable practices are being made when the day of show comes around. Movin’ On’s Sustainability Team was the first experience that truly made me appreciate the health and beauty of our planet, and made me realize that I can have a direct impact on its future. The past two years being a part of this team has allowed me to walk away with some of my best friends and memories I look back fondly on.

Movin’ On has had a close relationship with REVERB for years now, with a few of our organization members being past interns. With that being said, we’ve turned to REVERB a lot in helping guide us through the development and execution of our many sustainability programs. I can confidently say that my experience interning with REVERB has opened my eyes even more to the importance of environmental action in the music industry, and how it’s an important consideration at any size of a live music event.

As the newly appointed Director of Operations for Movin’ On 2025, my goal is to use the knowledge and hands-on experience I’ve accumulated at REVERB when it comes to leading my very own Sustainability Team and efforts made by the festival. I look forward to carrying on the legacy, hard work, and drive that is at the heart of our Sustainability Team, and I plan to make Movin’ On 2025 the third year in a row being a 100% recyclable event.