Paradies Garten has become one of the greenest festivals in Europe.

During the second edition of Paradies Garten Festival in August 2023, we made significant steps forward by reducing our CO2 footprint to 90.38 tons of CO2 equivalent. This represents a remarkable 21% decrease in total emissions compared to the previous year, a considerable achievement. This improvement was made despite an increase in the number of festival visitors, bringing the CO2 footprint per person per day from 15.8 kg to 12.2 kg CO2e.

The largest portion of the CO2 emissions is attributed to transport, both for production and third parties, accounting for 38% of the total emissions. Event production activities are responsible for 79% of the CO2 footprint, totalling 71.5 tCO2e. This indicates room for further improvement in these categories.

A significant shift occurred in the transportation sector, with our festival seeing a substantial decrease in traveller emissions. This reduction is primarily the result of a successful collaboration with the local railway company ÖBB, which offered free night trains to Vienna, just 30 minutes away. As a result, we almost doubled the number of visitors using this method of travel, with approximately 88% of attendees opting for train transport.

Our festival's food court was also made more sustainable by implementing a strict meat-free policy for all food vendors, requiring them to offer at least one vegan option. This decision also contributed to minimizing the carbon impact of the food served. In collaboration with Mastercard and Global Payments we will make sure that transactions will be greener as we further extend our decision to run cashless operations.

We will use electrification as a critical strategy to further reduce our energy footprint, benefiting from Austria's low grid carbon intensity. Thanks to an enhanced partnership with the locally based green energy supplier “Energiepark Bruck an der Leitha”, 100% of the electricity used during the festival will be sourced from nearby wind farms and an Agri-Photovoltaic facility. In other terms, we will be able to completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels during the event days, equivalent to a saving of over 7,000 liters of diesel (or around 19 tCO2e).

These results demonstrate a solid commitment to sustainability and show that the festival is on track to continue reducing its ecological footprint. With new efforts and innovations planned for this summer, we will do everything we can to deliver increasingly greener upcoming editions.

A Greener Future, an international non-profit that tracks and audits sustainability at music festivals worldwide, has produced a detailed report on our carbon emissions. Feel free to check it out right here.