2011 Sweetwater 420 Festival Atlanta Georgia -- Bad or Good for the Green Movement?

Image: http://sweetwater420fest.com/

On our walk to Sweetwater Brewery's 420 Festival we noticed some Candler Park residents with signs in their windows saying "hi" to the hippies attending the "greenwashed" event. My heart sank.

First, I need to clarify that I have been going to the Sweetwater Brewery Tours since back when you brought a camping chair and they served beer off of the loading dock. The tour was $4 in those days and you got four full glasses of beer. 420 fest was nothing more than a band playing on that loading dock while you did the "tour" (not many actually took the tour). It has now grown into a music festival in Candler park attracting people from all over the the Greater Atlanta area.

For a moment the signs in the windows bothered me. Conveniently, April 20th (also known as 4-20) falls close to Earth Day and provides a great reason for a dual celebration. I thought about the damage the foot traffic was creating in the park, liter, semi's left running, powering multiple stages, power to food vendors, etc. I decided to take a bit of an account myself as we went into the park -- to see how green the concert in the park really was.



420 Festival certainly was full of very corporate sponsorship....and not sponsorship with a green image. Natural Gas was a primary sponsor. After a little contemplation however, I started debating the necessity of corporate sponsorship to make an event possible and even more importantly, how the green movement could use a some big PR -- the kind major corporations use.

Do events like these do more harm than good? Or, are they a publicity boost for "being green"?

Unfortunately, I didn't see much other green activity.

• There were recycling containers. But in 2011 shouldn't that just be automatic? Should they really get a pass on calling that green? No points.
•  I didn't see them handing out schedules to fill the park with liter. Great. One point. However, they also didn't have the lineup posted anywhere obvious. Maybe they have no liter, but the patrons are a bit confused.
•  There was definitely a lot of power consumption. We did see a picture after the fact indicating some solar panels next to the stage. One Point. But, I am assuming since Natural Gas was a sponsor that at least some of the power was supplied via natural gas…..not exactly a green choice. Minus a point.

Do I think this festival offered any new information about the Green movement? Probably not. I think their attempts to make the event appear green were lazy at best. I think the intent was good, but ultimately they did have a carbon footprint --  and probably a hefty one. I can only speculate what that was.

The event may have attracted some non-green Atlanta citizens. But, it certainly didn't offer enough to convince someone they should start recycling or that the green movement is much more than an image of twitching-tadpole dancing hippies who smoke a lot of pot.

So why am I torn about the importance of this particular festival?

Here's my dilemma. Sweetwater is a local brewing company to the Atlanta area. Ultimately the goal of the Sweetwater festival is to get more people to drink Sweetwater beer. The event will attract mostly local Atlantans and is sponsored by Atlanta businesses. SO, if the event convinces people to purchase a local beer and even better, local businesses to serve locally made beer year round, aren't they doing more good than harm?

Let's face it. People are going to drink their beer. The more that beer is made locally, the lower the carbon footprint of said beer.

Have enough Atlanta's festival goers replaced their import beer with local beer -- enough to make up for the carbon footprint of the festival? If so, perhaps, sometimes -- and only sometimes -- we have to forgive a few greenwashed things for the greater good.

If you want to know what your food footprint is go here.