No more excuses: sustainability is the only way forward.

SUMMARY - The Green Mobility Plan aims to reduce the carbon emissions from festival travel, which represent a significant portion of its ecological footprint. Since 2022, the festival has promoted rail travel, with a goal of reaching 30% of visitors traveling by train by 2025 and improved electric shuttle services to train stations. Additionally, car travel is discouraged through high parking fees and incentives for carpooling, while artist travel is focused on European tours to minimize air travel, with electric vehicles used for transport to/from the festival. 

Since the carbon emissions from visitor, supplier and artist transport will continue to represent a massive chunk of our ecological footprint, travel is crucial to our sustainability ambitions. After all, this accounts for the majority of our total carbon emissions.

Since 2022, we have initiated a dedicated green mobility plan, introducing a night train schedule and promoting train travel to minimise the share of visitors coming to Perk by car. Last year, we estimated that 25% of visitors travelled by rail. Night train destinations include Brussels, Antwerp, Mechelen, Ghent, Leuven and Hasselt. In June 2025, we aim to reach the benchmark of 30% of visitors who travel by train. Good news: we are adding night trains on Sunday, too!

Clearly, it makes sense for us to continue promoting train travel and finding new ways to facilitate and make this option more attractive. That’s why we invested in a better electric shuttle bus service between the festival site and Vilvoorde’s train station, with the help of our local mobility partner, Brussels Airport. On the other hand, parking fees will remain relatively high (at €25 for a day and €35 for the weekend), discouraging car travel. Visitors who do not carpool (less than two persons) will receive an extra parking fee of €5. To make carpooling more convenient and accessible, we are working with Slinger. This easy-to-use tool enables participants to effortlessly arrange rides with each other in just a few clicks. This platform aims to streamline the carpooling process, save time, and reduce environmental impact. Lastly, we also continue to collaborate with You Smart Thing, a helpful tool that allows visitors to plan out their travels to and from the festival precisely, including shuttle buses and night trains.

Regarding artist travel, our booking team remains committed to only booking international artists already touring Europe to limit air travel. Additionally, we will continue to promote Belgian artists on our lineup (standing at 44% in 2024) – not just because they don’t travel by aeroplane but because we believe in our local music scene, too. Transport between the festival and the airport, hotel or train station is exclusively done by electric vehicles. 

SUMMARY - Our Green Power Plan focuses on meeting the festival's energy needs sustainably, with a significant portion of energy coming from solar power and green energy. For 2025, we will upgrade our infrastructure with a large solar panel field and additional batteries to provide clean energy while minimizing the use of generators. Additionally, all production and crew areas run on solar and green energy, and energy consumption is closely monitored to optimize efficiency and reduce environmental impact. 

Our Green Power Plan focuses on meeting the festival's energy needs sustainably, with a significant portion of energy coming from solar power and green energy. For 2025, we will upgrade our infrastructure with a large solar panel field and additional batteries to provide clean energy while minimizing the use of generators. All our energy consumption is closely monitored to optimize efficiency and reduce environmental impact. 

Energy needs for a festival are significant due to the large-scale production, lighting, sound systems, and various on-site services required to create our signature experiences for our guests. In the past years, we have already reached ambitious milestones, with the biggest part of our energy consumption coming from our solar energy and green energy from the grid. 

For 2025, we have upgraded our energy infrastructure with a new energy hub in front of the castle, supported by several batteries and a large solar panel field that all visitors can see at the entrance. This year, we will use 230 solar panels connected directly to the batteries to provide clean energy.

Additionally, our production and crew areas already run 100% on solar and green energy. During build-up and break-down, the festival relies entirely on solar power and the grid, without generators. This setup helps us minimize our environmental footprint while delivering an exceptional festival experience. 

Finally, to minimize energy consumption, we monitor all consumption and identify the exact needs of each area. This approach allows us to identify standby consumers and optimize our setup. Our hybrid setup is quite unique, especially on this scale.

SUMMARY - We prioritize sustainable food by using local, seasonal ingredients and aiming for a 100% plant-based menu by 2025, reducing CO2 per meal. Reusable cups are used for beverages, with cleaning done off-site to minimize water use, and a donation program supports River Cleanup. 

Music is food to the soul. And we take that seriously at Paradise City. We want to offer delicious dishes with a small impact on the planet. Our in-house food curator examines the ingredients with each caterer, focusing on local and seasonal products. Our values are laid down in a Food Supplier Agreement, which every caterer signs. We do this not only for the food at the festival but also at the campsite, the Comfort Zone, the artist village and the crew catering.  

Our menus have been mainly vegetarian since our first edition. Still, in 2023, we also removed the remaining small amount of fish from the menu. This reduced our ecological footprint from 0.55 kg to 0.42 kg CO2 per meal. The introduction of reusable plates was also a big step forward. Our goal, as outlined in our Green Deal two years ago, was to stay below 0.50 kg CO2 per meal. Year after year, we reduced the share of dairy products such as cheese, milk and eggs. This way, we achieved a nice average score of 0.37 kg CO2 per meal in 2024. And in 2025, we will take the next logical step: we will go 100% plant-based.

For beverages, we strictly use reusable cups that are not washed on-site to limit our water use. We use three trucks before and after the festival to transport the cups to be cleaned at another location in Belgium. Visitors were offered to donate their reusable cup warranty to River Cleanup, our sustainability partner, who also provided volunteers on-site to keep our festival clean. 

SUMMARY - We tackle waste management with several initiatives, including distributing pocket ashtrays, donating leftover food, and providing reusable water bottles to crew members. We also use reusable cups and plates, ban single-use plastics, and increase our recycling rate, which reached 52.8% in 2024. However, waste from the campsite increased in 2024, and we will focus on reducing this in 2025 with new awareness campaigns and actions targeted at camping gear waste. 

Waste management at festivals is a big challenge that we have been tackling for years. We work closely with the monitoring team of EcoFest to put our ambitious Waste Management Plan into practice.  

Some of our actions aimed at reducing waste include: 

• The distribution of pocket ashtrays and installing recycled cardboard ashtrays on-site. 

• Our Food Truck Agreement already aims to minimize the surplus food at every truck. Still, leftover food from the food court, campsite kitchen, crew catering and artist village is donated to a good cause. In 2024, this was Tafel Van Buren. 

• Crew and volunteers are given a reusable water bottle during their stay on-site. 

• Upon entry, campers need to pay a deposit and are given two types of garbage bags to recycle their waste. They receive their deposit when bringing back their bags correctly afterwards. Since 2022, the campsite has an expanded recycling park. 

• Production materials like signage, banners and wooden elements from stages are designed to make them reusable, either for the same event or for another one – possibly in a different way, with minor adjustments. We are also working with secondhand shops and renting organizations to further minimize the impact of our materials. 

• Since 2018, we have applied a strict ban on single-use plastics across its bars and food court, exclusively using reusable cups (EcoCups) and plates (KioBox).

• Some beverage partners already provide their non-alcoholic drinks in 1.5-litre glass bottles (used to fill cups). Now, more will do so, resulting in even fewer cans.

• In 2024, we increased our recycling rate to 52,8% (versus 42,5% in 2023).

Unfortunately, the amount of waste per visitor increased in 2024 compared to 2023, mainly coming from the camping area. This is why we will focus more on waste generated at the campsite in 2025. New actions will be implemented to raise awareness and further decrease the amount of waste, notably due to camping gear left behind by participants.  

SUMMARY - We have implemented various water-saving initiatives, including the use of water-use calculators, vacuum toilets, and free drinkwater taps to reduce water consumption and wastewater. We are currently improving our water supply pipe system for better control, partnering with Aquafin for wastewater disposal, and participating in a pilot project to develop waterless, chemical-free toilets for future events. 

Paradise City has used water use calculators at almost each terminal for a few years, allowing for better data on the total water consumption. Since the temperatures during the festival were relatively high in 2022, we have installed several free drinkwater taps. We use vacuum toilets on the festival site, which leads to a decrease in our wastewater per visitor. From 2025, we will also use vacuum toilets on the camping site, allowing us to decrease water use even further. 

We improved our system of water supply pipes across the domain. The pipes can be switched on and off as needed. So, in case of spillage in a certain area (in a bar area, for example), the manager can reach the central dispatcher, who will inform the production team which pipe has to be turned off to avoid further spillage and correct the problem. Most importantly, the pipe system allows the shutdown of individual pipes while keeping the water supply loop of the festival intact. 

All of Paradise City’s toilet wastewater is collected by DSSV and disposed of after the event at Aquafin, which processes it until it’s safe to be released back into the ecosystem’s waterways. Because Perk’s limited water processing capacity is insufficient to filter the entire weekend’s wastewater, we used to transport all the wastewater to the Aquafin filtration facilities in Grimbergen. However, we reached a new agreement with Aquafin to dump some wastewater in the local sewage system, which limits the volume that needs to be transported by trucks to the filtration facilities and further decreases the impact of wastewater disposal and treatment.  

Grey water from the camping showers is collected by Hello Water, which filters and purifies the water before the water goes back to the lake around the castle. This year, we will be using the purified water for flushing the toilets. This is another step towards closing the loop and reducing our water consumption. This summer, we are also taking part in a pilot project led by WhenNatureCalls, aiming at rethinking event toilets for the benefit of people and the planet. These new toilets do not use any water or chemicals.

SUMMARY - We prioritize preserving biodiversity due to the unique location of our festival. We invest in year-round care and restoration of the gardens around Ribaucourt Castle, with ongoing biodiversity assessments, including studies on local bats, to ensure minimal impact on the ecosystem. Future efforts will focus on continuously monitoring and updating these assessments. 

Paradise City owes much of its charm to its breathtaking location, which is why safeguarding the richness of its biodiversity is of utmost importance. The park and surrounding waters of Ribaucourt Castle are part of the Natura 2000 network, a protected area initiative across the European Union designed to conserve Europe's most valuable and endangered species and habitats. The festival grounds are recognized for their rich biodiversity, which requires ongoing conservation efforts. Over the years, we have made substantial investments in the restoration and year-round care of the gardens around Ribaucourt Castle, with a dedicated gardener overseeing their upkeep not just after each edition but throughout the entire year.

Additionally, we conduct thorough biodiversity assessments to gain a deeper understanding of the ecosystem’s health and its impact on local species. For example, we have carried out specific studies on the bats residing on the property, which showed that the festival has no overall negative impact on their presence. Moving forward, we will continue to update our biodiversity assessments and closely monitor the state of the ecosystem to ensure that the festival has as minimal an impact as possible. 

SUMMARY - Paradise City engages with local communities by offering ticket discounts, addressing complaints, and collaborating with local organizations. We promote sustainability, improve soundcheck schedules to reduce noise, and participate in international conferences to learn & share green event practices. 

Like previous editions, Paradise City remains in constant dialogue with the local communities of Perk and Steenokkerzeel on safety and nuisance. Every household in the greater area surrounding the festival site receives a significant discount on entrance tickets, and they have direct contact with a liaison who channels possible complaints to the head of production, who will take action if necessary. We also cooperate with local organizations like sports clubs and scouting groups in our volunteer program. Additionally, the rental fee paid to the site owner is directly reinvested in the estate’s renovation. 

Paradise City’s influence on local policymakers is limited, but we can use the attention our festival receives to push our sustainability agenda. From now on, we will organize our soundcheck schedule more efficiently (all soundchecks at the same time, at a given hour of the day) and communicate this better with our neighbours. 

Throughout the year, the Paradise City core team participates in international conferences that promote the same ambition to make events greener and share data, such as The Green Events & Innovations Conference (GEI London), ADE Green (Amsterdam), Meet in Flanders Academy, ECHO, etc.