Colours of Ostrava 500 Litres of Oil, Zero Plastic Confetti and Gas from Festival Waste

Cup bins, the collection of cigarette butts that can take fifteen years to decompose, and transporting artists by electric vehicles and overland routes across Europe – how sustainable is Colours of Ostrava, and what is it planning next? Executive Director Petra Řezníčková responds.

You have been processing catering waste into biomethane and fertiliser for two years – how does it work in practice and what does it bring you?

We collect catering waste directly on the festival site and, in cooperation with regional partners, direct it for further processing into biomethane and organic fertiliser. Our aim is for the whole process to take place as locally as possible within the Moravian-Silesian Region.

However, we must openly admit that, even in the second year, we did not manage to protect the catering waste completely from contamination. Although visitors, stallholders and a large part of our team sort waste very conscientiously, at the end of the festival there were situations where the containers for catering waste were contaminated with other materials. An old carpet, for example, or part of the equipment from an exhibition is enough, and the entire contents of the container can no longer be processed in the required way.

For us, this is perhaps one of the biggest challenges of recent years, because we can see a huge willingness among people to get involved, but the final link in the chain can undermine the entire effort.

Where we do see very positive results, on the other hand, is in the system for collecting and buying used cooking oil, which has been working very well over the long term. Every year, we manage to collect and environmentally process more than 500 litres of used cooking oil, which then finds further use.

At the same time, we support the use of compostable catering tableware. We enable our partners and stallholders to purchase it on preferential terms through the company OPTYS. We place great importance on ensuring that not only the packaging itself, but also its subsequent processing, remains within the Moravian-Silesian Region.

In 2022, you sorted 80% of plastic waste – where are you today?

We want to maintain a high level of sorting over the long term and continue improving the system every year. The biggest shift has not come from one specific measure, but from a combination of several steps. Cup bins work well, making it easier for visitors to sort waste correctly. Replacing single-use plastics with alternative materials also plays an important role, as does the use of ceramic tableware wherever it is possible to ensure it can be washed and reused.

At the same time, we have confirmed that a certain threshold cannot be overcome simply by adding more bins or improving signage. At a festival attended by tens of thousands of people, there will always be a certain degree of contamination in individual waste streams. That is why today we are increasingly focusing not only on sorting itself, but also on the quality of subsequent secondary sorting.

This is precisely why our next goal is to bring a sorting line directly onto the festival site. In this respect, we are already very close to a concrete solution, and I believe that in 2027 it could become part of the festival operations. This would allow us to work with waste even more efficiently directly on site and move the whole system one step further again.

Colours has a strategy called “Our Path of Responsibility”. What does this mean in practice when selecting the festival’s suppliers and partners?

“Our Path of Responsibility” is not a one-off project or a current trend. It is a journey of more than twenty years, during which we have gradually added further steps towards a more responsible festival. At the same time, we have realised that responsibility is not only about the environment.

Over more than twenty years, we have implemented a number of projects that we now consider a matter of course. These range from providing drinking water on site and the Festival Ticket supporting the use of public transport, through cooperation with Nextbike shared bicycles, to the Mental Health Point and the extensive Colours Without Barriers project, which makes the festival accessible to people with disabilities.

In the area of sustainable transport, this year we are continuing with the Colours Express, a specially dispatched Czech Railways train featuring an onboard concert by the band Gufrau, and we are further developing our cooperation with Nextbike. Visitors will have three bonus stations available at the Hlubina, Ruská and Lávka entrances. When renting a bicycle from these locations, they will receive 15 minutes of cycling free of charge, so getting to the city centre or the festival campsite will take only a few minutes.

Social responsibility and inclusion are equally important to us. That is why, for example, we allow seniors to enter free of charge on Saturday and have long involved seniors in volunteer activities as well. We want Colours of Ostrava to be a festival open to everyone, regardless of age, health condition or life situation.

We also see festivals as places that help shape social norms. In a certain sense, they function as influencers – showing what responsible behaviour can look like in practice. From waste sorting and environmentally friendly transport to mutual respect. We consider this to be one of our greatest responsibilities.

What still troubles you in terms of sustainability, and where do you not yet have a solution?

One of the areas we are still dealing with, and where there is no simple solution yet, is transport and logistics connected with artists, their teams and festival visitors. For example, we are looking for ways to work more efficiently with accommodation so that there is less need for repeated transfers between the hotel, airport, soundcheck and the performance itself.

Transport is one of the significant sources of emissions associated with organising large cultural events. That is why we try to offer visitors alternatives to individual car transport. The Festival Ticket in the DPO app has been working well over the long term, and the Heimstaden “We’ll Take You Home” night buses are also a very important part of this. Thanks to them, visitors can return safely, for a symbolic price, to various places across the Moravian-Silesian Region after the programme ends, without needing to use their own car.

On the other hand, we can see that artists themselves are now very aware of these issues and often come up with solutions that make sense both economically and environmentally. Many international performers fly to Europe for an entire tour and then travel between individual stops together with their crew in tour buses, which significantly reduces the number of individual transfers.

Alongside shared transport and tour buses, we also try to support the use of electric vehicles for the local transport of artists and their teams between the airport, hotel and festival site. This is not a solution that would, in itself, eliminate all emissions connected with transport, but it is one of the steps that helps reduce the impact of festival operations.

We have also managed to do a great deal of work in the area of hospitality riders. Today, we communicate the real needs of individual teams with artists’ management in much greater detail, which helps us reduce waste and the amount of unused food that would otherwise end up as waste.

At the same time, a number of small changes have been made in this area in recent years, almost invisible to the ordinary visitor. For example, we have banned the use of plastic confetti and other single-use effects. There are dozens of similar measures. Visitors often do not even notice them, but it is precisely the sum of these small steps that ultimately has a significant impact.

Today, we do not see sustainability only as a question of waste on the festival site, but as a topic that runs through the entire festival ecosystem – from transport and production to cooperation with artists and their teams. And that is precisely where we still see room for further improvement.

What can visitors look forward to this year – not only musically, but also in terms of sustainability? Are you planning anything new?

For us, sustainability is not only about major projects, but often also about addressing seemingly small details that ultimately have a major impact. One of this year’s new features will be a greater focus on the collection and recycling of cigarette butts and used heated tobacco sticks.

A cigarette butt is certainly not an invisible problem. A cigarette filter can take up to fifteen years to decompose in nature, which is why this year visitors will find special bins from Reneso on the festival site, intended specifically for cigarette butts and used heated tobacco sticks. Portable collection containers, the so-called “heetelníky”, will also be available and distributed free of charge by the IQOS team.

We are also hugely pleased about our partnership with the Hedepy platform, which will send its psychotherapists to the festival site. They will support the professionals providing psychological first aid at the Mental Health Point by the entrance gate.

And the music programme of the twenty-third edition is beautifully illustrated by two statistics. Two thirds of our line-up will be appearing in the Czech Republic for the first time, including debut visits by the singer Lorde and the singer Teddy Swims. And women make up 40% of our line-up. We have not always managed to put this together in the past, but this year it makes us all the happier, because the main evening slots will also belong to outstanding female artists such as LP, AURORA and Alison Wonderland. Last but not least, we are curious to see how many parents will be waiting with their children for Mira’s original vocals from the animated film KPop Demon Hunters, performed by Audrey Nuna.