Sustainability is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a music festival: scenes of discarded water bottles, broken camping equipment, and fields littered with garbage are all too common. But for anyone who has experienced the Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario, it’s hard to miss just how seriously the festival takes its responsibility to the planet.
Perhaps less visible is the commitment that was a deliberate choice made early on, and one the festival has built on each and every year.
Hillside is a not-for-profit charitable organization that has held its annual summer festival on Guelph Lake Island since the early 1980’s. From the very beginning, the festival recognized that hosting thousands of people on a small island every summer carried real environmental consequences worth taking seriously.
“Hillside Festival was a leader in adopting green and sustainable practices from the very beginning, which shows how deeply sustainability was valued by the Guelph community members who started the organization in the mid-1980s,” says Kate Johnston, Director of Hillside.
“Over 40 years later, sustainability and environmentalism shows up in so many different ways — our audiences tell us every year how important our sustainability initiatives are to them.”
That commitment has only grown stronger, and Hillside today is considered one of the greenest festivals in the country and internationally.
The awards alone tell an impressive story: Best Greening of a Festival from Festivals and Events Ontario every year since 2008; the Honour Roll Award from the Grand River Conservation Authority; Best Green Operations from Canadian Music Week in 2016; the International Clearwater Award in 2019; and the Sustainable Tourism Award from the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario in 2023. Very few festivals anywhere in North America can match that record.
On the ground, one of the greenest parts of the Hillside experience is how the festival handles waste. Serving over 10,000 meals per day for up to 6,500 patrons, artists, and volunteers, Hillside owns its own reusable dishes, mugs, and stainless-steel cutlery, rather than handing out single-use plastic.
A volunteer dishwashing crew of around 150 people keeps everything in rotation all weekend. Through a partnership with the City of Guelph, single-use plastic bottles are gone entirely. The festival provides a 16,000-litre tanker of free tap water with eight filling stations on site, an initiative running for over a decade. Transportation is another crucial piece of the puzzle. Free shuttle buses run all weekend from Guelph Central Station, connecting with Guelph Transit, GO Transit, and VIA Rail. The festival also partners with the Guelph Off Road Bicycling Association to run organized group bike rides to the island, with more than 10 percent of attendees arriving by bike — well above the city average. The cost of these initiatives is covered by revenue from paid parking passes for those arriving by car.
The most remarkable part of Hillside’s environmental record is its carbon footprint. Since 2019, the festival has been carbon neutral, one of the first of its kind in North America to reach that milestone. With over 29 years of data, Hillside has saved roughly 1,856 tonnes of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of removing 394 cars off the road for an entire year. Solar power, LED lighting, and digital sound technology keep energy use low, while carbon offsets cover the rest. The island’s permanent main stage also features a living green roof, reducing stormwater runoff and supporting native plants and pollinator habitat.
All of this is noticed by attendees. When asked in a 2023 survey how important it was that Hillside promotes environmental responsibility, 98 percent of attendees rated it as important or very important.
Celebrating over 40 years of putting the planet first, Hillside Festival has earned its standing as a national leader in sustainable events and a real source of pride for the city of Guelph and the wider region.