A circular and climate-positive festival requires a menu that leads to low emissions, enhanced biodiversity, healthy soil, proper water management, and loyalty to the local food system.

By consciously programming what you eat and drink during Into The Great Wide Open, we also choose ingredients from specific agricultural and production systems, thereby supporting them. What you eat now determines the landscape of the future. In our food program, we choose ingredients of organic, regenerative, and/or local origin wherever possible, and we work closely with growers, farmers, and suppliers who understand this vision like no other. In this way, our menu has a growing positive impact on the origin of these products. Fermentation artists, food forest managers: many food improvers cook at the festival. What they put on your plate may well be a small foretaste of the food system of the future.

LAB Vlieland calculates, among other things, the average climate footprint of our festival meals. For an average dish, we come out at about 0.4 kg CO2e. That is in line with what the WWF indicates as the global level to stay within the maximum increase of 1.5 degrees in the Paris Climate Agreement. Delicious food can therefore perfectly well be sustainable and within the boundaries of our Earth.

In addition to ecological factors such as climate emissions, we are also working towards social and economic goals. A healthy food system is an essential basic prerequisite for nature, people, and society alike.

TRANSITION FUND

This year, we are actively encouraging caterers to source regeneratively and locally, and to use fossil-free transport to Vlieland. Choosing pure, healthy ingredients should not be a luxury, but a feasible standard for everyone.

We also work with a circular and climate-neutral cooperation agreement for suppliers and caterers. This way, everyone puts their shoulders to the wheel for shared goals.

WASTE TO SUCCESS

There is also Waste to Success, which rescues a lot of leftover festival food. Children serve a great dinner to visitors using leftovers from festival caterers. We also aim for waste-free operations in a broader sense: reusable materials, high-quality recyclable, or even compostable. 

VLIELAND'S ITGWO BEER

Every year, we brew a Vlieland beer with Brewery Fortuna and Brand. Made from delicious, pure Vlieland dune water, brewed on Vlieland, using power from the Vlieland sun and with Vlieland flavors. The chain could hardly be shorter. Taste it at our bars during the festival.

REUSABLE TABLEWARE

Everything you eat and drink here is served on reusable tableware: cups, plates, bowls, and cutlery, for both the public, artist catering, and backstage. You hand in the tableware at the designated collection points, after which it is washed and can go straight into the next round.