By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—When the music stops and the crowds go home, every music festival looks the same: a grotesque sea of empty water bottles, red Solo cups, and food wrappers. Enough plastic to start a landfill. The garbage gets hauled away, hidden from view, and forgotten. Not to mention the vast amounts of electricity needed to power the affair, electricity that isn’t always produced sustainably.
Now, imagine a music festival that’s still awesome fun but with zero waste and zero emissions, where food and drink are served only in reusable and/or biodegradable containers and everything is powered by solar. The Imagine Zero Music Fest, to be held in Brandon on Saturday, May 13, is moving us ever closer to that reality.
The festival is the brainchild of Ben Kogan of Reusable Solutions, a sustainability consultancy in Woodstock, and his friend Cliff Johnson, a social-impact entrepreneur. The idea for a zero-pollution music fest came to them on a hike in fall 2022, when they found themselves lamenting the massive waste generated by the music festivals they liked to attend.
Kogan recalled, “Cliff turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t we put on our own music festival?’ By December of 2022, we were seriously making it happen.”
Kogan is himself a musician (his band will be performing at Imagine Zero) and had already been trying to introduce notions of environmental stewardship into the music world through his organization Musicians for Sustainability, which has gotten pledges from bands and venues to abide by attainable principles of sustainability. But the Imagine Zero festival puts their money where their mouth is, attempting to prove that concerts and sustainability aren’t mutually exclusive.
There will be no bottled water and all alcohol will be served from kegs (wine included), to avoid cans and bottles. Black Flannel Brewing Company of Essex Junction even came up with a new Imagine Zero IPA just for the event. The festival will also be powered entirely by solar panels.
“We’re not going to get all the way [to zero pollution],” said Kogan, acknowledging the inherent difficulty of his goal. “But we want more festivals to aspire to be zero waste and zero emissions.”
The event will take place at SolarFest’s compound on Steinberg Road, just north of Brandon Village. Kogan and Johnson are both based in Woodstock and wanted a venue within 100 miles of home that could accommodate an all-solar event.
“There were dozens of venues we could’ve chosen, but once we added in the solar, the number of options went down to 2: SolarFest in Brandon and another venue in Woodstock,” said Kogan.
Ultimately, they went with SolarFest because of the sustainable-energy collective’s prior experience with music festivals, one of which took place at their compound in Brandon last summer.
“I played one of their festivals 13 years ago and people kept recommending them,” said Kogan. “It’s a great opportunity for them and us both.”
The show itself will feature 8 acts, including nationally known bands like Dawes, an L.A.-based folk-rock group, and locally prominent musicians, such as Kat Wright, Myra Flynn, and Ben Kogan himself. The winner of this year’s UVM Battle of the Bands—Earthworm—will open the event. Whatever your views on sustainability, if your musical tastes run to indie/folk rock, you’re sure to enjoy the lineup.
Kogan emphasized that, ultimately, it’s still a music show and not a sermon.
“We’ve got all the ingredients for a really good time.”
Imagine Zero Music Fest will take place on Saturday, May 13 from 12 to 8 p.m. at SolarFest on Steinberg Road in Brandon. Visit imaginezerofestival.com for tickets.
