I have a google alert set up with "green event" and over the last few weeks I've been seeing a lot of festivals touting themselves as green. Three recent stories:

Pollstar.com reports that the Disco Biscuits' Camp Bisco 6 will be green because it's buying renewable energy credits:

The festival will be powered by 100% renewable energy, thanks to sponsors Green Mountain Energy Company and Sustainable Waves. Festival goers will also be able to purchase a "Green Ticket" that will provide 250 kWh of green-e certified renewable energy made from sources like wind and bio-energy.
The Disco Biscuits and not-for-profit organization Conscious Alliance will partner to collect donations of food to benefit local food pantries. Fans who contribute 10 non-perishable food items or a specific cash donation will receive a limited edition print by artist Rob Pea. A similar effort at last year's Camp Bisco collected more than 1,000 pounds of food.

Meanwhile, CBS 5 News in San Jose says that the upcoming San Jose Jazz Fest is going green because it's going with the corn-based plastic and promoting recycling:

 The Comcast San Jose Jazz Festival has announced it will be a green event featuring biodegradable plates and utensils, recycling stations and, of course, all-natural jazz.

 Not to be outdone, Earthtimes.org is running a press release about last weekend's Virgin Music Fest, complete with gushy quotes from Darryl Hannah like this one:

 "It is so wonderful to see Virgin Mobile taking its impact on the environment seriously," reports Hannah. "By supporting the many solutions available, Virgin Festival By Virgin Mobile is taking care of nature while also serving as a model for other event producers. Living Green isn't nearly as hard as it might seem, and it's actually a lot of fun once you get going! My hope is that attendees at the Festival will be empowered by what they see and adopt some of these practices into their daily lives."

 So which of these festivals actually seems (as judged by their websites and PR) to be doing the best job?  The honors go to Sir Richard and the frankly annoying Darryl Hannah.  The other two are trying, but given the high bar set by Lollapalooza, Live Earth, and Bonnaroo, they come off more greenwashed than green.  The Disco Biscuits get some extra points for hiring a sustainability consultant, but unfortunately they either chose one without any imagination or simply ignored some of the finer points of the recommendations.  Simply offsetting your emissions and prodding your fans to add to the $145 tickets with voluntary carbon offsets doesn't make you green.  And while the food drive is a nice humanitarian touch, there is nothing inherently "green" about it.

The Virgin Festival, in addition to winning the cheekiest-name award, seems to be the best of the current crop of self-titled green festivals, although their use of 20% biodiesel and carbon credits, not to mention the preachy actress, belies some of their intent.  But according to their website, they've done a pretty good job in most areas.  For a refreshing change, they focused as much on waste reduction as on energy.  In a couple of places, they seem to have gone beyond what Bonnaroo and Live Earth did, possible in part because they had a smaller event to pull off.  Specific instances include composting their compostable plates, cups, straws, and flatware (not all corn-based, for a change, but all plant-based) at a local farm; donating materials like benches to local charities, offsetting their carbon locally through donations of solar panels, and having volunteers man the waste stations to make sure that the recylcables/compostables/trash are properly separated.

This wide disparity in the efforts needed to label an event "green" really underscores the need for some sort of rating system or benchmarking.  Yeah, I know, rating systems aren't perfect, but they're a good deal better than what we've got now.  Look for John Rego over at BrandNeutral to release some work on this soon.

 Coming up soon:  coverage of Burning Man's green efforts.