How the Envision Festival Changed my Life and Community
Endangered Hawksbill sea turtle is freed after 4 months of rehabilitation
by: Amber Hagberg (Live your Yoga Retreats)
As many of us down here in Costa Rica are surfers or at least natural born ocean lovers, we care deeply about our environmental impact. What I personally love so much about Envision is not only the opportunity to see all the different possibilities of how to create your own reality in how we live our lives through music, movement, energy, and good quality food but that it’s a festival of NO plastic for four days. For those of us who have been to music festivals all over the world, we know just how much trash there is on the ground and overflowing the dumpsters, during the event and afterwards.
When attending Envision, if you choose to buy food within the food court or buy a beer, they have a system where you rent a cup and plate for the entire weekend with a ticket system. You buy the plate and cup, when you are finished with it, you return it to the dishwashing station to be cleaned and turned in for a ticket. From this point on, you continue to use your ticket for a new plate and or cup. In just that weekend alone, think of how much plastic is being saved! Some places, instead of using plates at all, they use banana leaves! I love this, use the earth when given the opportunity and when you’re finished, mother earth can recycle it back into her natural form, dirt. Envision also doesn’t sell plastic water bottles, they offer water refilling stations. The food venues give out bamboo straws and metal eating utensils. Not one piece of single use plastic for four days , shows over 7000 people within the venue another way of reducing the impact we as humans have on the planet.
Think about when we fly, how many plastic cups are used on each flight, every day, each time you get a cup of water? They pour you water into a plastic cup from a plastic water bottle. Afterwards, the flight attendants come around and collect all the trash, only to come around later to give you another plastic cup for something else to drink, even if its more water. When we go out to eat, think of how many plastic straws are being consumed by restartuants and bars alone. Not to mention, go into the grocery store and buy anything…. Chances are its wrapped in plastic. Your rice, vegetables, hair products, toothpaste, or toilet paper. Everything these days comes in plastic.
What many don’t know about this is the radical rate that our use of plastic is increasing as well. What I love is before my yoga classes last year, or at any yoga retreat or teacher training I do, when I educate others on this fact they are stunned. Especially when we do a beach clean up and my students get to see just how many tiny pieces of plastic our on the beach. These tiny pieces of plastic would take hours upon hours to clean up, you almost need a broom to make more of impact. But what it does is open the eyes to why the coral is dying off and more and more sea animals ore consuming plastic.
Envision festival does this as well. They offer free festival access to volunteers who will come 8 Sundays in a row before the festival and 8 Sundays after the festival, to clean up trash. The amount of trash is devasting. Envision doesn’t allow vendors to sell plastic, step one! Show people a new way to live; plastic free when possible. Especially single use plastic. Step two, show the people just how much trash and plastic is on the earth and making its way to the ocean. With our mindfulness and awareness, we can change the way we live through using less and educating more! Thank you Envision staff for being an example and thank you to the people who are supporting and standing behind this new paradigm.
May this music festival, Envision, here in Costa Rica show people new ways to live and be in the world.
Limpiando Osa does beach cleanups throughout the year and partners with Envision to help keep our beaches clean.
