AGF Insider: Trends And Best Practices In Sustainability With Ákos Dominus
Welcome to AGF Insider, our insightful series where we bring you monthly interviews with industry experts.
(Photography: Doro Novak)
Each month we catch up with an industry leader in the sustainability world to find the current trends and best practices
This month we catch up with Ákos Dominus, Sustainability Manager at Sziget Cultural Management Ltd
What are the best practices that you are seeing give the best results?
It's it's not easy to highlight one particular practice. Still, one to mention is our composting system, which was already awarded the innovation awards from AGF in 2020. We compost all tableware, such as plates, forks, and knives. And that can be composted with leftover food altogether and since starting, we have grown the scale of the programme effectively.
Another one that I am keen on was a pleasant development in this last edition of the festival, where we used banners for upcycled merchandising products. And not only banners and tent materials from tents left by visitors on site. Now, we can use these materials to create new products to print logos on as official merchandising items.
Some are fanny bags, and some are hats, which have proved popular with festivalgoers.
What trends are you seeing this year?
One is in our festival, but it's also relevant as ever at other festivals, as is deposit-based systems on plastic bottles. A growing number of countries have a deposit-based system for plastic bottles. On the one hand, it's an opportunity, as it incentivises people to bring the bottles back to recycle. But it's also a challenge as some people will start searching for the bottles in the garbage bins and causing a huge mess. That's what we need to avoid.
What are the obstacles?
I’d say there are two obstacles. Two very different ones.
Major festivals are seeing growing production costs where ticket prices cannot be increased similarly. So we are all faced with budget constraints. Although there's a consensus and a lot of support behind green initiatives, in a challenging financial environment as such as it is, you just cannot prioritise that as much as you need or want to.
The other problem is more of a political concern: Hungary has had a far right-wing Government for 14 years, and there is very little support for climate change and climate intervention. The political environment is not supportive of issues such as climate change.
However, within our Sziget Szitizen community, we have an environment where we can stand up for our shared values and create our society, so we are optimistic.
What’s the next big thing in sustainability in events?
We will see more partnerships or sponsorship deals with companies that will already provide ESG reports. They might see participating in the green initiatives of a festival as a potential contribution to their sustainability efforts, which might also be featured in their reports.
What would be the biggest game changer from your perspective?
Some events are not yet using reusable cups. This transition is the biggest game-changer. It makes a massive difference in preventing plastic pollution.
As for the next step, it would be using grey water. At Sziget, we have flush toilets instead of chemical toilets, which means we use significantly more water during the festival. The game changer is if we lower this water usage but keep the flush toilets. And, if we could use grey water from showers for this, that would be a huge step.
One other idea, as we already have the composting system for tableware, is that it would be great to use reusable tableware in the future. We already have washing facilities for reusable cups, so we could look at scaling up those capabilities. It would be too costly for the reusable tableware, but we could also consider renting. I hope it's something we can implement in the next few years.
We hope you found Ákos Dominus’ insights on sustainability trends and best practices both informative and inspiring. Keep an eye out for next month's edition of AGF Insider, where we'll bring you more expert perspectives and fresh ideas!
(Photography: Doro Novak)
