Festival-goers at the ACL found more than music on the schedule: the Austin Parks Foundation (APF) brought interactive sustainability to bring forth effort on environmental stewardship. Their outreach this year focused on recycling education, sustainability efforts, and community programs designed to protect Austin’s parks long after the crowd goes home.
C3 Presents, an Austin-based company that produces Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL), estimated that more than 70,000 people pack Zilker Park each day for ACL. The APF volunteers work behind the scenes to maintain the beauty of the park through encouraging sustainability. Some of the efforts to make this year’s festival more environmentally friendly include aluminum cups and a reward for cleaning up Zilker Park. In an attempt to make recycling more fashionable, APF created “Rock and Recycle!” The premise of this initiative is to encourage people to pick up recyclable items in exchange for a T-shirt with local bands on the back, something that Alex Hohman, an Austin Parks Foundation volunteer, found an important part of the festival.
“I think one thing that people don’t take advantage of enough is that if you pick up a bag of recyclable cans, you get a free T-shirt from local artists,” Hohman said. “It gives back to the community in terms of preserving our parks, and it supports local artists.”
With thousands of people at Zilker Park, ACL urged the importance of keeping the park clean and staying mindful of their recycling habits. Michael Field, a Rock and Recycle volunteer, explained why cleaning up after ACL is important.
“We have to make sure we aren’t a filthy species, you know,” Field said. “We have to stay a good example for the environment.”
APF programs such as Rock & Recycle are visible throughout the event, and there are many more sustainability efforts throughout ACL. One of these is the hydration stations seen throughout the festival.
“One thing many attendees seem to glance past is the hydration station,” Russo says. “The water stations reduce the most plastic, since people are bringing reusable water bottles.”
Aside from Rock & Recycle, APF has other programs it runs throughout the festival, including Austin Kiddie Limits, Volunteer HQ, and Divert It, a program where volunteers educate people on items that are compostable or recyclable near trash cans. While Austin Kiddie Limits is an ACL-specific event, Volunteer HQ and Divert It are programs APF holds throughout the year. Madelyn Russo, a Rock & Recycle volunteer, mentioned how these programs affect Austin parks year-round.
“These are very impactful programs in my opinion,” Russo said. “A lot of the funds we get from ACL go into the APF funds to keep the parks healthy.”
Even outside the festival, the department’s work stretches into year-round programs. These efforts don’t draw the same attention as the festival booths or on-site activities, but they shape how parks maintain their charm.
