Op weg naar een circulair en klimaatpositief festival
The sustainable mission of Into The Great Wide Open
Projects
Content
A social and circular society is the future. To achieve this, a sustainable transition is needed. Into The Great Wide Open and Lab Vlieland see festivals as the ideal testing ground for this: a place where you build a small society from scratch for four days, where you can do everything differently.
The urgency is high. That is why we are taking on the challenge with a clear ambition: working towards a fully circular and climate-positive festival. An ambition without an end date, not a promise. Where possible, we measure our steps and results and make them public.
What do circular and the climate ambition mean for ITGWO?
For us, circular means that in the end, nothing more has to be incinerated or landfilled. Materials are reused, high-quality recycled, or composted. What we purchase is second-hand, refurbished, bio-based, or made from recycled material.
For the climate, we are working on reducing our emissions in scope 1, 2, and 3 as much as possible. In addition, we contribute to long-term CO₂ sequestration, also taking our historical emissions since 2009 into account as a reference. This sequestration largely takes place outside our own supply chain and does not undo our own emissions.
We are not there yet and we cannot do it alone. We are working on this together with artists, volunteers, employees, partners, suppliers, and festival visitors. In four steps:
Prevent and reduce. Using energy and materials as efficiently as possible.
Switch. Replacing fossil energy and materials with fossil-free and circular alternatives wherever possible.
Contribute to CO₂ sequestration. For the emissions we cannot yet prevent, we invest in long-term carbon storage outside our own supply chain.
Incorporate historical emissions. We invest annually in additional carbon storage, using the calculated emissions of a previous festival edition as a reference.
Prevention and switching always carry more weight than CO₂ sequestration. We have been measuring our footprint for years and make our progress transparent. We are not there yet, but we continue to reduce our impact step by step.
Where we stand now
Energy
In 2023, our festival locations ran on 85% Vlieland solar power. In 2024, that was 95%. In 2025, for the first time, no fossil fuels were used at all for the energy supply at any festival location. In 2026, we will continue this trend and further expand the system. For example, we are deploying electric vehicles as mobile batteries to make smarter use of locally generated energy.
Construction
Since 2024, we no longer use equipment that runs directly on fossil fuels during setup and dismantling on Vlieland. Electric forklifts, gators, and vans replaced the fossil-fueled versions. This prevents direct emissions from combustion during construction and reduces noise pollution. The next step is logistics, both on the island and on the mainland.
Travel
Thanks to the Goede Reis (Good Journey) initiative, visitor emissions are steadily declining. In 2025, 51% traveled fossil-free to the festival, compared to 31% in 2018. The Goede Reis surcharge therefore remains €15, so that fossil travel remains relatively more expensive than fossil-free alternatives. With the Goede Reisplanner, the FIP campaign, and various fossil-free travel options, we try to make fossil-free travel as easy and attractive as possible.
We have been measuring our footprint for years and therefore know better and better where our impact lies. We are not there yet, but we are seeing progress in various areas.
the transition fund
All the money left over from the Good Travel Surcharge goes into the Transition Fund. With this, we charge ourselves an internal CO2 price of 90 euros per ton, and at the same time free up budget for sustainable innovation projects. Emissions thus become a real cost item on our own budget. That helps.
This is how we did it in 2025:
ON THE ROAD TO CIRCULARITY
Reusable tableware, no trash bins but collection points, and a resource management that borders on the obsessive. Result: 80 grams of residual waste per visitor per day in 2025. The national average is 450 grams. The recycling rate was 95%, so 5% residual waste (not yet circular). And of our procurement in 2025, 90% was purchased circularly (second-hand, recycled or bio-based).
Water, we save where possible, toilets are mainly flushed with purified drainage, ground and bar water, and this has received extra attention this year.
CONSTRUCTION SITE OF THE FUTURE
Our projects around energy, transport, materials and water come together at the Construction Site of the Future: a temporary testing ground where pioneers from the construction and events sector experiment together and look to scale up the best solutions. Read more about it further on.
With a clear course, a lot of patience and even more trying, we are getting closer and closer to a circular and climate-positive festival. Not by talking about it, but by doing it.
