Denmark, the country hosting the United Nations climate change conference this coming December, recently held Roskilde, the largest Music festival in northern Europe. Here, musicians such as coldplay, Kanye west, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, gathered for four days to play for one hundred thousand fans. Each year Roskilde Festival donates any profits from the festival to humanitarian and cultural purposes. This year the festival collected it’s largest humanitarian donation ever – to climate change! Although the concert has had somewhat of a green profile for many years, because of the COP15 coming up later this year, the Music festival decided to make climate change the main focus.
The gate to the CO2-neutral ‘climate community’ was shaped as the international recycling sign, a large green arrow. Inside the festival, several different groups set up base to encourage festival goers to join the anti climate change movement. There were stationary bicycles that could charge mobile phones and cameras when concertgoers connected their electronics and peddled. Some Bicycles pressed plant oil, and were used to power a large colorful ferries wheel. There were also DIY solar panels and wind turbines installed that provided electricity for the camps. Other campaigns included MTV’s “kiss for climate”, where each kiss on camera donated one Euro to the Bellona Foundation (which invents environmental technology), and also, a quite successful clothing exchange shop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_BO9UhbkrQ

Thanks to festival profits, and 1580 people who took the ‘green footstep’ to donate 23 Euros each, Roskilde has raised 306,000 Euros for the Climate change cause.