What does it actually take to make sustainability a core pillar of a major live event — not an afterthought? In this episode, we sit down with CJ Jerard, Chief Brand Officer at Outside, and Jonah Geschwind of Green Disco to unpack how they built Outside

Days, one of the fastest-growing outdoor festivals in the U.S., with sustainability baked in from day one.

From slashing diesel generator use by 95%, eliminating 190,000 single-use plastic cups, and achieving 100% food vendor compliance — to getting 30% of attendees to arrive by sustainable transport — this conversation is packed with real-world strategies that any event organizer, brand leader, or sustainability professional can learn from.

We cover: setting sustainability values before the first sponsor signs on, using stakeholder agreements as an onboarding tool, integrating composting and food donation programs, leveraging hybrid battery systems, and why fan travel is the hidden carbon emitter no one talks about.

Whether you're building something new or trying to green an existing event, this episode will change how you think about what's possible.

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Outside Days Website

Green Disco

Jonah on LinkedIn

CJ on LinkedIn

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Connect with our hosts:

Zena Harris on LinkedIn

Mark Rabin on LinkedIn

You know, you always, at that point, I think you have to sit down and say, okay, what are our true north? What are our values? Right. Otherwise you get a Frankenstein.

Hi, this is Zena Harris and I'm Mark Rabin. Welcome to the tie in Xena. Hey, Mark, how are you? Where are you, Winter?

I'm still. I'm still in winter. I don't know if anybody saw my. Saw my post yesterday, but I am in Canada. I'm in Alberta and it has been minus 30 degrees Celsius.

I don't even know what that feels like. I don't think I've ever felt.

It's crazy. It's crazy. But, you know, like, literally, like tears streaming, like your hands freeze in two seconds, you know? Winter, real winter.

Well, we saw some snow flurries. They didn't stick. So fun for a minute. Yeah.

This week we're talking with Jonah Geshwin and Christopher Gerard. C.J. from Outside Days.

Yeah. Amazing. These guys are setting the gold standard, or I should say green standard for, yeah, truly greening festivals, but not just.

Not just lip service, but actually doing it. And they've laid out a roadmap and they talk about it to us. And even with presentation stats, like, we're really doing it.

And it's not just, you know, plastic water bottles. It's. It's everything from food, materials handling to power for like 30,000 people.

Yeah, yeah. It's a big festival. It's May 29th to 31st this year. It's in Denver. And, you know, go check it out. Go see what they're doing in real time.

And really pay attention to, like, what they're tracking, how they're doing it. It's really cool stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. So enjoy and please remember to like and subscribe on our social media channels. And we'd love to hear from you. So please do feel, reach out and.

Yeah, en. Hey, everybody. Today we're here speaking with CJ and Jonah Geshwin.

Super excited to have you guys on to talk about the real world deployments that you guys have been up to. Jonah and I met at Global Citizen over a year ago now, and we have you on the podcast as well.

So you're a returning guest and you've been up to some amazing things and we look forward to hearing about Your work as well as with the Outside Days festival as well. So guys, who are we speaking to today?

I can kick it off at least my. At least as a returning guest. It's awesome to be back in and see Zena and Mark as well.

And at least Green Disco is an environmental consultancy and we really kind of support all types of festivals, concerts, venues, stadiums and really all types of live events with sustainability programs. Doing the data collection to really understand, quantify the impacts.

Really integrating the onsite solutions, whether it's with waste management, with the onsite energy, trying to mitigate and reduce reliance on diesel and then really focused on the impact reporting too.

So how do we actually really share this way that connects with fans and here with cjin, definitely want him to give the intro to Outside Festival, one of our amazing partners we've had the pleasure of working with over the past few years.

Thanks Jonah. Thanks for having me on. I'm Chris Gerard. Cj, as you guys have heard, I'm with Outside.

Outside is a collection now of the famous Outside magazine as most people know, but also another 30 brands that all come together from climbing and backpacking and Yoga Journal. Our apps with Gaia and Trail forks that really are all about inspiring people to get outside. That is our mission at Outside is to get outside.

Yeah, you know, very simple. But most things that work are simple and that's what we always come back to.

That's our true north in terms of what we're trying to accomplish in the world and Outside days as it is now, year one, Year two is Outside Festival is under my purview here at Outside as the Chief Brand Officer in addition to some other activations that we have. But this is really my baby, our baby with my team in experiential. We've been lucky enough to be introduced to Jonah and his team from the beginning.

And when we came up with this idea, there were all sorts of aspects around sustainability that we had goals with. And I'm happy to talk about the origin story. I'll kick it back to you. That's just who I am. But I'll let you guys direct it from there.

There's all sorts of fun stuff in terms of how you build a large scale event like this with sustainability in mind. And we've got Jonah and I have some great stories on how that came to be.

Well, first of all, cj, great to meet you. Jonah, great to see you. But yeah, I mean do tell us, we want to know all the dirt on how this got started.

The origin story and like, yeah, the process for getting this thing going sustainably.

Yeah.

The origin story on the event itself, which has really been a remarkable journey of idea to execution for myself and others like Jonah, who had been involved from the early days.

Really, one of these things that started as an idea conversation, myself and our CEO Robin Thurston had a conversation now, five years ago over lunch. Hey, why doesn't the outdoors have sort of a South by Southwest kind of event?

You know, trade shows have always been prevalent in the outdoor industry, but a cultural event that brings that people really want to go to, whether or not it's in their business. Right. He spent a lot of time in Austin. I've been to south by many, many times.

And that idea of a cultural gathering for a summit, if you will, for the outdoor industry and a festival for the outdoor enthusiast really lit my synopsis up and started connecting.

And we had some conversations with the governor of Colorado and some conversations with the city of Denver and with the outdoor recreation office specifically, and our good friend and director over there, Connor hall around trying to bring something like this to Colorado. Colorado's got a great brand in that way also, right? Outdoor people.

And all of a sudden it was like, hey man, maybe we could make something happen here. And just some anecdotal sort of stuff.

Like I went to Austin with a map of Denver and went through south by and sort of looked at the geography and was like, hey, I think that we could do something there. You know, all these theaters and all these venues in a very concentrated space in Denver. And how could we bring like a large scale event here?

So that's where like the idea really, you know, from an entrepreneurial perspective, which is really my background, it was like, I think that, I think there's something here and I think there's a thirst for gathering within our industry. So maybe there's a signal.

We did a feasibility report that came back with some support from the state that got me a little bit of a mandate internally.

And at that point, and this is the relevant part, when it was apparent that we could do something large scale, you know, you always, at that point, I think you have to sit down and say, okay, what are our true north? What are our values? Right.

Otherwise you get a Frankenstein pretty fast as different pressures come in, a new sponsor comes in and they want this, that or the other thing. Business pressures, staff pressures, time pressures, you know, municipalities pressures, right?

So we sat down and said, okay, what are our values around this? And I, and I think this is a really important part of Building anything, right? Culture and the values, creativity.

You know, we knew we wanted music, we knew we wanted film and magnetism that would bring people to buy a ticket, right? So creativity sort of encompassed that. The second part was inclusivity, right? Part of what get everyone outside is by its nature inclusive, right?

We want as many people who are interested in the outdoors, not just the performance people, the mountain climbers and, and, you know, the hardcore runners and so on, but the folks who just want to eat a sandwich in the park and get sunlight in their eyes, right? Like, so make sure that we create an event that really invites everybody from all different walks of life to come in and be in the park together.

And the third very important and relevant to what we're talking about was sustainability.

And so we set that out as a value right away because as we know, anyone that's built any sort of business, you know, you really have to have that as a value. Or frankly, it's hard, right, to do things in a sustainable way. It's harder, it's easier and cheaper, often.

And faster, more expedited to not do them that way often.

And so if you haven't set that out from a leadership perspective and assigned some accountability, some directly responsible individuals, you know, it. It suddenly finds a way of not being there, right?

So that, from an origin perspective, I, you know, that's what I would want to call out to your audience is, you know, you have to make the commitment right from the beginning. And so it was right there in our big three pillars that what we do, everything we do, has to go push, get pushed through those three pillars.

Creativity, inclusivity, and sustainability. And so along that journey, we had someone that had to be assigned directly to that.

And that's how we came to Jonah as well, is, okay, well, we need to make sure that we've got an expert who knows how these events get put together, what to do, what not to do, and find a trusted partner and have internally responsible people who actually. Sometimes there's some fights, right?

Like internally, like there might be some tension between sales or sponsorship and the kind of things that we need to do, or the. Just the PNL in general, because it's not free to make sure that you do all these things correctly.

I think Jonah can speak to the fact, you know, I don't want to put up a bunch of smoke around like, oh, it's. It's so hard, it's so expensive. That's not.

What I'm trying to say is it can appear that way, but when you bring in someone like Green Disco, they can start to show you actually that it doesn't necessarily have to be that hard or expensive. It just has to be done smart, done right. And it needs to be prioritized.

So I'll stop there and maybe Jonah, you can jump in on how we found you and what your story is. Because really, frankly, without Green Disco giving us guidance, we would be kind of lost in the woods.

You know, we all as consumers can say something as simple as, well, we don't want any single use plastics. That's an easy thing to say.

How you execute that on the ground of a large scale event when you're going to have 30,000 people over the course of days who need water and how you cost sort of, you know, analyze that. You need someone who really does this for a living. And that's where I will pass it to you. John.

Well, but before, before you. Well, cj, thank you. Before you jump in, Jonah. I mean we know that most people die off the trail, 100 meters off the path.

Right.

So I think to bake it in at the beginning is really, there's a lot of vision there. So kudos to, to UCJ for identifying that. Jonah. Yeah. If you want to jump in and sort of like tell us, you know, working, what was it like?

So talk us through. CJ reached out to you. I mean, I don't know if he found you. Were you Googling, you know, like sustainability and entertainment?

CJ and then you found Jonah, like how, how did you guys meet? And then what does that process look like? And then Jonah, feel free to jump in as well if you've got some stats.

If you want to just start to share with our audience a little bit about what, what you've accomplished there too. But just. Yeah, take it away.

Yeah, well, I'd say. And then just thank you for the, the kind words as well. Cj, CJ is really the, the quarterback in the entire festival and everything.

So really when he set the overall goal and everything, they set the internal team instruction. He actually did an internal team at outside dedicated to sustainability.

On, on a corporate level they have kind of an internal team and then they also had some people dedicated to the festival and got connected to them. I would say, yeah, very, very early on. And it's not every day.

I don't think it's actually ever happened to us where we've ever been involved with a festival before it's even happened.

And that's a true testament just to outside and the values and actually putting their mouth where Their money is really, or their money where their mouth is and really investing in it from day one. And really I'd say the main focus for us was it's a first year festival that's never happened before.

So there's going to be fires, there's going to be mistakes and CJ has some crazy stories of things that have gone wrong. But of course we've made it work in crazy ways.

And in year one specifically the understanding was we're not going to be able to do everything, but let's really try to do as much as we can, improve a system, build a foundation that works and that we can really continue to expand and build upon. And I'd say did a few very level, very specific, high level things that any event can really do. One is we need what we call internal agreements.

And this is an agreement for every single stakeholder. It's not an agreement or it's not an agreement, it's an agreement and the agreement exactly.

Every, every stakeholder, whether it's a food vendor, whether they're providing energy to the festival, whether they're just a volunteer, they have to sign it.

And this agreement is specific to them, it has the policies, whether it's bringing their own bottle being zero waste, zero plastic, whether it's collecting specific data points.

And from the onset this established this, this foundation top down, that every vendor, everyone involved with the festival before it even happened, knew that sustainability was going to be a core and central part as a part of the onboarding documents. And when you get that buy in from, from a festival top down from CJ as well, that's really when it becomes a lot easier and a lot more efficient.

And you're playing smarter too. You're being proactive rather than reactive.

And so in year one had a ton of success and we were able to really prove a system, I'd say with energy specifically. We have an amazing production team, but they're been around for a while and they're pretty old school.

They've never seen new technology, these battery systems and ways to power events without diesel.

And this next year, because we proved it out, we had six generators and the festival footprint increased pretty massively. We definitely needed more power, but we were able to do that with fewer. With fewer diesel generators.

And year after year, I think the data that we're collecting and the fact that we're continually proving success is just continually proving to the team that sustainability can be done in a way where it improves the fan experience.

Maybe it costs a little bit more at the upfront, but there's ways to actually make that money back in unique ways of integrating sponsorship and all those kind of other avenues that a lot of events aren't really thinking about. The way that you can cross pollinate sustainability.

Yeah, it's super cool to hear. Like, year one, you, you know, you got a baseline, you figured out, like, what you could do.

And then year two, you know, kind of not only did the event expand, but you're. You're bringing down, you know, carbon footprint, if you will, or the number of diesel generators.

It's like, like sometimes you figure out like, we, we talk about, like, how do we even talk about sustainability? You know, it's not like a thing like you, you know, a noun, if you will. It's like it's a practice over time.

It's like we're evolving over time, and that's like you're capturing it so well and how you're talking about it. That's super cool.

And, and even on that, too, usually an event, or whoever it is, they will isolate sustainability into its own department or make it a very. Make it its own department to an extent.

When it is something that you need to work with ops, you need to work with waste, you need to work with supply chain and the actual materials that are being brought on site. You need to work with ticketing to integrate systems or you can track fan travel.

It's really something where you need that access across the board to be able to do it in a way where. Where the sum is greater than. Than. Than all the parts.

And so that's really kind of the way that outside has given us access and then really just embedded us into their kind of ops and production team has really allowed us to do a lot more than we've been able to do at the typical event. In that sense.

I love it. I mean, it just becomes part of the culture right out of the gate. And I mean, that's incredible. Maybe just so that we can have an idea of some stats.

Did you want to pull up? Do you have a slide with just some. Some key stats and, and you can get an idea of.

Of.

Of that? So we can. Yeah, so people understand the scope and scale. CJ, you mentioned 30, 000 people.

Yeah, maybe I can, I can give a little bit as, as Jonah pulls that up. Yeah. Some context around, like, well, what are we talking about in terms of the festival and, and the size and scope of it?

You know, and I think that in terms of how we built it, it's relevant also, you know, we brought that idea and we sort of thought, hey, you know, if we could get 10,000 people the first year, that would be great. You know, 18,000 people showed up. Right. Okay, well, if on the second year we get 25,000, that would be great. 36,000 showed up. Right. Oh, so what.

What that shows. And again, it's relevant here is that one. There was a thirst in the outdoor world for a gathering that was really very consumer based.

Like, there have been these trade shows, but this is bringing in the outdoor enthusiast as much as it is the outdoor industry. And that, that brought, you know, a fairly large scale, and we were ready for that. That was the really cool thing of working with Green Disco.

And the way that, you know, Joan has described how we've tried to integrate that idea of sustainability into all of the different workflows that we have.

So it's not just, you know, okay, the single use plastics, and it's having Jonah again and his team, who is really, really have a sense of where you want to bring that, that, that value of sustainability into all parts of the workflow. And what does that mean? Like, why is it. Why does it matter?

It's because the experience itself, which is ultimately what we're trying to create, we're trying to create a sticky experience where when you walk through those gates, you know, to get really kind of out there, right. The vibe is one that you're like, oh, this feels right. It feels good.

It feels like there's been care and thought put into every aspect of this, not just in one part of the signage or, okay, great, we were recycling, but then you're not kicking plastic bottles on your way out, like we've all done at 100 concerts, right. That there feels like someone actually put thought into this. And it. It. And the experience isn't harder because of it.

It actually is integrated into it in a way that it may, in some cases, it makes it feel easier. Right. Than it would if these things hadn't been thought about.

So sustainability doesn't just have to be about, like, what Jonah will show us here in a second about what the result is. The way we see it is very much is it improves the overall Experience for the, for the, the person, the attendee for our event.

And we expect to see upwards of 40,000 people this year and we're bringing that experience to all these people.

So that the word of mouth around our event is not just that it's great music, not just that they're great films and experiences and they saw someone famous like Alex Honnold is up on the screen here. But they actually also say, you know, it just felt good, it felt good to be in community. And I think the sustainability aspect is part of that.

In particular with our, you know, the audience outside caters to which is one that really cares about what happens to the planet and the outdoors naturally.

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

And I mean even as CJ was saying earlier, one of my favorite parts about the festival is just being able to like walk around and just seeing Alex Arnold speaking to a little group of people and just be like I had no idea he's even speaking now. Like I thought he was speaking yesterday.

But all these people are just so invested in the community and they're doing so many things just across the entire weekend. It felt inclusive and just having everyone outdoors in that sense.

And as mentioning too with energy specifically we essentially saw 95% reduction on fuel usage and compared to a fully diesel generator setup. And as mentioned we had six large batteries that were essentially powering or that were hybridized powering a majority of the outdoor footprint.

And then we had a lot of these. We had around 10 pre charged batteries that were actually pre charged mainly via the grid at sun belts facilities and then brought on site.

So use zero diesel energy on those setups and essentially we're able to power majority of the festival with fewer diesel generators. And even just one was one note

for folks listening on on Spotify or itunes that so this is an image of a hybridized setup where you have a large battery, you have a small little diesel generator, you have some distro there and basically you're pairing at your nodes, various nodes, a diesel generator and a battery or multiple batteries depending.

So you're able to literally just charge the battery straight directly and then the generator turns off and you're powering basically your stage production crafts, you know, wherever you are, your food court off of the battery.

It's a much more efficient system compared to just running fully diesel, even just jumping ship to I'd say material procurement and waste. This is say the more tangible side.

Not everyone's interacting with batteries or generators front of house but we really focused on very, very small things from Actually integrating signage where we could display facts from year one and all the data points that we did collect and displaying in a way where it's reusable. So how can we actually now display the amount of plastic.

Plastic or single use plastic cups and bottles that we avoided this year, which was around 190,000. So being able to use the same exact signage to represent new data points year over year.

And then cups, we were essentially able to eliminate all single use plastic cups on site through these reusable cups. They had little bands on them and carabiners so fans could just clip it on their backpack.

And as you guys could imagine with this audience too, that's a very outdoor focus community. These are cups that are actually taken home and using. We had less than a half a percent of these cups end up in the.

In the back of house waste stream. And we separated those cups from the waste stream and gave them to the back of house staff. So no cups ended up in the landfill.

Which is really cool to see.

Yeah, that's even

another just small thing off the waist. But. And kind of goes back to last slide too. But we really focused on composting programs this year.

Last year we did a lot with a really cool local partner called Scraps. Scraps Mile High.

They do a lot of really, really unique work in the city to try to compost a lot of these materials that the city at large is not able to process. And with them, we essentially created this partnership.

We created a pre vetted list of all the materials that every single food vendor, every single sponsor should purchase. From covering everything from 1oz sample cup to deli craft paper, everything that a vendor could possibly need.

And we're able to see a 4x increase in the amount of compost waste and small things that we do. But actually take pictures of the waste at the facility. A lot of people say my recycled this or composted this.

But sadly a lot of the time it never really ends up at the facility. And we do very small things like photo verification to actually ensure that what we say happens. Because we don't want to be able to display it. No.

And I'll just. Jonah, just to give you kudos on that. Like that is so important to me.

You know, stewarding the brand of outside that the follow through is there's a paper trail to it to a degree. Right. And that that's even for me internally with the number of things that we're juggling to put us an event of this scale on it. What Green disco.

And Jonah, what They do around that is so helpful to leadership because I'm able to then run that all the way up, you know, to our CEO even, and say, look like this is all verified from the standpoint of that, that we are doing what we say we're doing, right? And that is, that's actually super important from a brand perspective.

Not that you put this out, you know, we're not, we're not doing a press release that shows this necessarily.

Like, there's a big pile of trash for the listeners, but we have it in our back pocket just to say, look, we, you know, it's helpful for leadership who has to speak to this to have that image in their mind, really, and say, no, we know how much we're. We're actually making sure that it lands where we say that it is, which is, you know, it's hard to do these things.

So it's helpful to have that verification.

Yeah, totally.

I also feel like, you know, talking about fan experience, like, it actually like, closes the loop for, for fans as well, where, you know, you don't have to wonder. You can see, like, what actually happened with the stuff.

So that's super cool because that's like, you know, people always ask about that, well, what, what. What is going to happen with this stuff? Or, you know, did it actually go to the right place? So super important to, to be able to do that.

And people always. And this is more of the sustainability nerd in me, but they love to chase claims were zero waste.

We're carbon neutral, whatever it is, and zero waste technically, like the actual definition, if you look it up, it means 90% waste diversion or more. But there's still so much waste that's being generated, it's just getting recycled or composted and still 10% of it could end up in a landfill.

So saying it is very misleading. And we always like to. And with our clients and especially Outside, who likes to be very transparent and very bold too, it's just say it as you do it.

And if you do that, that's when it's very authentic and we find people resonate the most.

And one of the really interesting things when you look at a lot of these events is the hidden emitter is always in every single case, fan travel, it always makes up at least 60 to 80% of the overall carbon footprint. And it's something that a lot of organizers view as out of their. It's something that an event organizer has limited control over.

But working with outside has been incredible because every single lever that they can Possibly push or pull, they will and have done. And it's small things from within their website, making it very easy for fans to plan their travel partnership with the city.

Where a fan can easily go in, put in their address, see all the very accessible travel methods for them, making it super easy for fans to actually bike. As you guys can see this, all the pictures here for anyone listening on online is just filled with bikes.

So much so that people were even just filling up the park nearby with their bikes. We had around 30% of fans take sustainable form of travel to and from the event, which is a bike valet.

Is this a bike valet or this is just like you just provided sort of places where people could chain up their bikes.

It was just bike parking and making it super easy and accessible for people to to do it. A lot of times you'll find is if the event organizer doesn't provide the infrastructure incentive, it's very difficult for the fan to do it.

But when the organizer provides that incentive and provides the infrastructure, it really does improve the fan experience and it allows a family with a kid to actually feel comfortable bringing their bike and knowing that it's going to be safe, not be stolen. They have a place to put it, easy access to and from their place.

And the one other small thing I will mention is the footprint platform, which is something we built at Green Disco, which essentially is just the way we actually collect firsthand data on where fans are traveling from and how they're traveling. Something that at least a lot of event organizers rely on billings of codes to determine that which are highly inaccurate.

And so with outside, we've been able to integrate this system to ensure that we're collecting firsthand verified data on fan travel data.

So it's been awesome to be able to even just get that access to integrate our programs directly to ticketing so that as fans are filling out their ticketing survey, they actually have to input where they're traveling, how they're planning to.

And something really interesting too is we saw a little over 25% of the audience opt in to receive a personalized report after the event, which is huge. It's a fourth of the audience who actively wants to see what their impact is via travel.

And so we actually text them a custom report after that allows them to see their impact.

That's such a great example, Jonah, of how going back to the attendee experience and how important, you know, that is paramount for me as the organizer that, you know, I, I don't want to create friction. I want to create a Great experience.

And the fact that you've got folks who 25% are actually taking the time to do that, you know, there's more who are actually interested and who are at least registering when they see all of these different ways that it's integrated into the experience going, oh, that, that aligns with what I care about.

And that is like, there's actually a great effect in terms of this again, the stickiness and repeat visitors to and growing the event, which I would again just say, like this is where the, the business side of bringing in sustainability and making sure that there are folks who are really accountable for it within your organization can have that payback from a brand perspective. I mean that, that stat right there is a, is proof that people care about it.

Yeah.

So.

So Xena and I come for the next year. Can we rent? Do you have partnerships with like bike rental companies? Because we'll, we'll be coming in obviously from out of town.

Like, that's something that's like just first thing that comes in my mind, like, how do I get a bike?

Oh, Mark, that's a great idea.

Actually, you know, one that's one of the things we're trying to bundle up is how for the out of towners, we had 26% of folks came in from out of town last year. And we hope that that continues to grow for, for the economic viability for the city and everything else.

You know, a package that is this hotel plus in on where you can rent your bike or get dropped off. That's a good idea. You know, and maybe we could even look at the hotel part. Jonah, we should make a note of that. Mark, we'll give you credit for it.

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought about when I looked at all this. I'm like, I don't have a bike in Denver.

How long do you get a bike there? Right, of course I will.

The micro mobility is too, is good. So it's like public, public access bikes. Those lift. Micro mobility bikes all that around too. But I made a note. Cj, It's a great point.

Jonah. Did we.

Within the, the bike parking zone, was there an area for like lime and you know, all the people coming in on scooters and you know, I, I don't recall that actually if there was kind of a.

It was, it was a separate area and it was, it was less official since this was actually formalized with the, with the city of tourism or with the tourism office. But there was a large volume of bikes, scooters parked, parked in an area unofficial drop off point.

That's, that's something for. I mean I think is it. It's mostly lime and bird, I think in Denver, right? That.

Yeah.

So maybe that's like another thing to follow up on.

On the good sponsorship opportunity.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and with a lot of this too. It's like with the bike valet there's easy opportunity.

Like one thing that we, we've been thinking about is like getting a bike bike brand involved where we could do a giveaway to people who bring their bike. So there's so many opportunities to overlay not just like slap a brand logo here, but really aligned partners.

Like a brand, A bike brand wants to access people who are biking and we're giving them direct access to a thousand people who just used the bike, parked it. So that's visibility, that's, that's hard to get. Another really cool thing that we did.

And this kind of just shows kind of how across the board and across department is really working across food and beverage too.

And specifically with the hydration stations, we saw tons of people refilling using their water bottles, bringing camelbacks, as you can see from this picture, or even just bottles from home. We had a BYOB program campaign where people were bringing their own bottles and allowed to and back of house.

Something that not a lot of people know, but we actually had a whole program. So we had a few different donations, a few different partners.

The gathering place in St. Francis center, they were actually donating the leftover back of house staff catering meals to around 120 meals. 117 meals were donated in total. And we worked with a lot of the actual food vendors and a lot of them came back year over year.

So every single food truck that we talked to is like oh my God, it's green Disco. Again, don't get mad at us. We brought the right materials and they would show us that they were actually fully compliant.

And we had 100 compliance from every single food truck. As you can see this guy, they all had signage that we put that essentially said all the materials that you're getting here fully compostable.

So really finding those ways where we can get the food vendors excited involved in this because if they are, then it translates to the fans and really that top level buy in if the food vendor is not, if they don't know what they're serving or kind of in that sense than the fans totally lost.

Gosh, that is such a great like such a great system and an observation too because like, I mean I can't tell you how many times we talk to, like, I work in film and TV and, you know, talk to caterers who are, like, begrudgingly doing a thing because they were told to. And this is kind of. You, like, flipped it and they're, like, excited to do the thing and, like, proud to put the sign in the window.

And, like, people know that's way to go. That's awesome.

At least just to kind of wrap it all together. It comes down to stakeholder engagement. And as I kind of started with, it's these agreements that are literally included in the onboarding documents.

So everyone as they're getting signed up for the event, they have to acknowledge compliance. Send this back to us to then the small things that we did of.

We had a green team, volunteer team of around 70 different amazing people who are on site, proactive, engaging with fans, signage that could be displayed on MainStage LED. It's not every day that an event will give you that real estate, but it really shows that outside cares about this.

The fact that they're actively displaying this across their LEDs and really small things too. But you can see even just this brand and company Radia, which is the one that actually built this shout out to them because they're amazing.

They essentially built this whole activation out of old T shirts taken from a Goodwill. The whole idea is address the elephant in the room.

Looking at textile waste and getting this brand reju that does some really, really cool stuff around recycling old textile waste and textiles and allowing them this onsite presence that engages with fans on a whole nother level where they can really, actually learn about sustainability in a whole nother industry. But the whole idea is these events are about discovery, whether it's new music, new food, and making sustainability a part of that.

That core experience has been something that we've been working on over two years now, which has been super exciting.

Jonah, how. And cj, how did you address, like, swag?

And, you know, you know, like, I think that's one of the things that I still struggle with the most is there's a lot of crap in swag and it's kind of plastic or garbage, and it's just literally single use swag and it's getting up in the garbage. I don't know. Like, that's always been a challenge. Like, how do you address that? Are you able. Are you able to direct some of that? Or do.

Do the vendors just know? They're just like. Like they're so aware that of their crowd that they.

They're Coming with really useful stuff that can be used and then upcycled or you know, put back into the recycling stream.

That's a good, good question. You know, I think is. And Jonah, you can jump in.

I think as Jonah said, the sort of our, how we bring in sponsors and our, our commitment to sustainability and that being communicated early helps put everybody in that mindset. And I do think that we have a built in advantage with sustainability given the audience.

Again like you're just naturally getting people who are, they're going to outside days like they're thinking about the planet to a certain degree. We certainly. There were a ton of giveaways. I don't.

And my kids were there grabbing stuff, you know, so I don't recall there being to, you know, anything that kind of like I was giving side eye to like wait a minute.

I think that there was actually a lot of sort of natural compliance to that as, as these brands want to show up in a way that is connecting with again with the, the overall experience. I don't know Jonah, if we in those agreements we have a checklist on that at all. That's you know, something that was like officially signed off on.

But it did seem that there's, there's sort of.

It's about the culture and about the overall brand and people seem to like kind of find their way with it when you really have it up front and center. Was that something like in terms of giveaways that we addressed at all officially? Jono?

Yeah, and it was in the agreements.

It's something that exactly is as CJ is saying, it's built in like if a vendor, if someone's popping up a swag, it was usually a reusable watermark that was functional and a fan could use and take home and actually get some sort of value out of. But there's also some people handing out stickers and whatever it is, even the nature of the festival, it's as CJ is saying, so inclusive.

It's free for kids. Like they want families to come.

And because of that you're getting random diapers that are finding their way into the waste stream and all sorts of things.

So it's one of those events by nature because it is more than just a music festival, much more than just a music festival where a lot of these waste streams are very hard to control. You're talking about 150 vendors and partners who are popping up on site, which is also hard to have 100% compliance on.

But for the most part everyone shows up in A way that's, that's very aligned.

And if someone does maybe have something that was non compliant or they didn't understand it was not intentional, where they're just like, oh, I'm so sorry, I had no idea, like, we're not going to do this. And you even just saw that with the food vendors, where in year one, a lot of them didn't necessarily follow suit. This was a new event for them.

It was a new kind of policy for them to adhere to. But in year two, it was a joke. And if anything, like, we were friends because of it.

And I think that's something that just year over year, it's never all going to happen. The day you plant the seed is not the day it grows. So you see those improvements year over year.

That's such a great way to put it, Jonah.

And I would, I would bring that back to like the, the alignment from the beginning and that, that is a, it's a privilege to like be able to build something from the beginning and you know, not have to retrofit to a certain degree by creating, you know, giving a mandate.

And you know, we, Kristen Hostetter, who is no longer with outside, but was there at the beginning, you know, was that person internally on our staff. And I will always give her credit for taking that job so seriously within our organization. And like I said, it wasn't especially at the beginning.

It's the hardest at the beginning.

And as Jonah says, like, once you set the tracks, it gets easier to a degree because people, there's clarity and expectation in terms of, oh, we, we know this program. It's. You're not having that first conversation anymore. But giving, giving somebody internally the mandate to be able to, to in it.

Actually with Kristen, it was like, this is your job is to be the person that kind of like people are like, oh gosh, here we go again. We got to talk about sustainability, right?

Like, it's in every conversation and her contribution and the contribution from some of the folks who, like, like John Dorn and others who were leading that first year and having that buy in from sales also you have to make believers of everybody in the organization on why something like this is important and what the payoff can be. And once you get that, it's just as Jonah described.

I think you start to see over time that people go, okay, I know what the program here is and I see it. And it's not something that I'm going to kick back against, actually. I'm going to embrace it.

But all that goes Back to like setting the mandate early, I think in order to really see success long term.

What's interesting too, it's got me thinking. I mean, I'm sure those vendors, maybe they just continue using this packaging versus. Versus going back.

Right.

You know, that would be the hope as, I mean, obviously this cascades out into the. Everybody goes back to their daily lives, but they. They're keeping these materials practices going.

So, I mean, yeah, it's funny, funny you say that because we actually have this live URL that was made for all the different vendors and we've tracked purchases that have been made post festival. So we know that vendors have actually gone back, used our discount codes and have actually continued to order these compostable. Compostable goods.

So it does carry out of the event. It may take some time.

It's.

But it does happen.

Joan.

It's probably even, you know, you mentioned earlier our production partner, Groundswell, you know, who initially, like, some of these things were different. I'm. I'm sure that they're probably even applying it in other areas too. Right.

Like, you see the sort of the ripple effect of it when it's done in the way that Green Disco and Outside have partnered on that, you know, not only with. For our event, but then people are educated and they start to see like, oh, wait, there's benefit.

And then this doesn't have to necessarily be more expensive, harder. If you do it the right way, it actually is just a benefit to the attendance and to your business.

So I'm curious there, like, how did the conversations evolve with like, the city and maybe other stakeholders that you were engaging early on to, you know, get this thing off the ground, and then they see the, you know, how it plays out and, and, you know, year one, year two, and, you know, the sustainability element, how things are integrated, how people are, you know, engaging and all that. How do those conversations change?

How have they changed? I think it's interesting when you're dealing, you know, it's. It's political. Right?

So, I mean, we've been so grateful to have the support of the state and the city. They really. I can't say enough good things about even some of our partners coming from out of.

Out of Colorado to help who are used to doing these things in other major metro areas being like, wow, is everybody in Colorado just like, so nice? And I don't necessarily think that's always the case.

I think it's because from the beginning, we presented a very clear vision that had these values that could align with leadership. So that they could.

In a lot of ways, it is kind of like cover your butt in all of these kind of political environments where if there's air cover on a leadership level, it's easy for people to get on board when the values are aligned. So in terms of that changing, in our case, I don't think a lot has changed because again, and I keep going back to it, but I think that the time.

It's the old adage of measuring twice. Right. We spent a lot of time at the beginning really figuring out what we wanted the brand and the vision of this thing to be.

And sustainability and inclusivity in particular were so aligned with Colorado's brand that it has been pretty smooth sailing with those partners. And look, it's a city. There's all sorts of different competing angles. Always. I don't want to, you know, there are always challenges. Right.

And the more that you can have an alignment at the leadership level, it makes those challenges less kind of obstructive because everyone says, well, we do want this to happen. Right. We're not trying to stop you from doing it. You are adding value to our community.

But, you know, there's some hoops you have to jump through and whatever. Like, that's normal. So it actually hasn't been a big change. It's. It's. It's been sort of from.

And I hope it doesn't change because it's pretty good with our partners in it right now around the city and the state.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you. You did what you said you were going to do, and that builds trust. And then, you know, you know, you executed on it.

And, and that's really important.

So, yeah, from a brand perspective, that's always, you know, understanding is sort of the first step and helping partners understand what your vision is. And if you do what you. You say you outline a vision, then you do what you say you do, as you said, then that naturally leads to trust.

And then, you know, trust and understanding equals, like, really strong brand. Right. I think we've, you know, sustainability has been part of that formula for us.

And I would say again, to bring it back to the business leaders who are, who are listening. You know, if you are, if you believe brand is part of your strategy, which I'm biased. I'm a chief brand officer.

Like, I think brand is very important. Right. If you believe that and you're. But you're trying to run an exercise on how do you, how do you get that trust with your brand?

One way to do that is to Lean into these areas like sustainability, where you can demonstrate that you are doing what you say you do and that you're sticking to your values and that leads to trust. And ultimately that is what is really behind brand in a lot of ways.

So one sort of slightly divergent question for Jonah here as we round out the podcast.

Knowing what you know here now and what you've learned at, at outside festival or outside days, how does this translate then to a festival that you're working with, that's already going, that's entrenched in their ways? Because you have worked with many other larger festivals or in different parts of North America, because that's something interesting, right?

There's tons of learnings here, tons of takeaways. I love the embedding it from the beginning. I mean that's a, that's a winner.

But yeah, there's so many other events that are struggling and they're, you know, you probably like, it's like running up against the wall and you're trying to figure out how to change that culture. And these are like high level thoughts and key takeaways on that as you, as you sort of take this learning into your other projects.

It's.

Yeah, it's a rare luxury to work with, with outside in a first year event too. But you will. I would say that as I said before, it's just, it takes time. The day you plant the seed isn't the day it grows.

And what we always try to do is just plant. See, I literally call myself a seed planter and water most of the days. But that's, that's what we do.

And like we're going to come out with an impact report with one of our partners. Deeptropics will be a five year accumulative impact report. And we didn't start working with them in year one.

It was year four or year three when we started working with them. But you'll see over the past five years we've been able to create a crazy trend in progress.

And year after year, year after year proving, I mean as CJ Said, his outside is done. It's, it's that trust.

It's saying it's doing as you say that you would do and executing it and continually proving it is when you get that trust and understanding and then you're able just to execute more. We bring new ideas to the table. Hey, what about this type of program?

What if we did offsite rainwater catchment system to help you guys actually go net positive on water usage? Crazy ideas that no one would ever listen to in year one actually get kind of listened to in year three or year four.

So it just takes time and we always start small.

The agreements, I always say, are just like the most simple but most effective first step, and you kind of just grow from there if you continue to water that seed.

Awesome.

Well, CJ and Jonah, like, really appreciate you walking us through this.

Jonah.

Where.

Where can people find out about green disco?

Greendisco Earth not.com Earth cool.

Can you just tell us when the festival happened?

Like, yeah. Outside days will be May 28 to May 31 this year. The weekend after Memorial Day is our always our our weekend in Denver, Downtown Denver.

You can find out more by going to outside-days.com outside-days.com where you can get tickets both to the industry event on the 28th and 29th and to the three days of music Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. Kids under 12 are free.

We'd love to see you in Denver to come join community and music and film and food and tons of outdoor experiences, from rock walls to cold plunges and saunas to biking and running. All those things in one place on campus. So. So, Zena and Mark, we expect to see you there. And we'll get you some bikes and come to Denver.

Yeah, we'll do some live podcasting from there.

Yeah, that's right. Meet you in Denver. That's great.

We have the setup for that if you want to do it. Cool.

All right.

Awesome.

Thanks.

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