Water Without Waste: Melbourne music venues ramp up effort to go plastic free!
Green Music Australia’s flagship waste campaign, BYOBottle, continues to gather steam, thanks to an exciting new partnership with iconic music venue, Melbourne Recital Centre (MRC).
Bottles from our Refill Not Landfill library are now backstage, available for use by all performing artists, and leading to an expected saving of over 900 plastic bottles per year. While this figure alone isn’t huge, the indirect benefit of ensuring cultural leaders avoid single-use plastic bottles while on stage at MRC is enormous!
Canadian indie rock stars The New Pornographers stopped by Melbourne Recital Centre for two live shows in February and loved the Green Music Australia water bottles, remarking they were impressed with the Centre’s commitment to reducing its environmental footprint through its partnership with Green Music Australia.
This new partnership bolsters our already successful work on Water in the Arts – an ongoing project supported by Vic Health and Creative Victoria to increase the availability of tap water and end the sale of single-use plastic water bottles. So far, with our help, three highly regarded Melbourne music venues have installed new accessible water fountains in their band rooms – Yah Yah’s, The Corner Hotel and Northcote Social Club. Several more venues have installations scheduled for completion next month, including the Workers Club (Fitzroy), Hotel Esplanade (‘The Espy’) and Thornbury Theatre. Participating venues have been encouraged to reduce or eliminate the sale of bottled water, and adopt plastic free policies, like allowing patrons to #BYOBottle and/or stocking reusable bottles to supply to staff and bands.
Melbourne venues Yah Yah’s and The Corner Hotel saying no to single-use plastics.
Our work expanding the #BYOBottle movement and reducing plastics in Victoria has been highly successful, and we look forward to expanding the campaign in the future. If you visit any of these partners, let us know if you’ve enjoyed the enviro-friendly changes!
‘At Yah Yah’s, we want everyone to be able to enjoy a great night out without the negative consequences. Encouraging guests to drink more water is a key part of us serving responsibly, so to be able to phase out single-use plastics for self-service stations isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for business too, and for everyone to be able to enjoy their night out.’ - Nicholas Jones, Managing Director at Yah Yah’s
‘The Corner is committed to reducing our environmental impact. In the last year we have installed solar panels, stopped offering plastic straws with every drink, halved our cleaning chemical use by introducing e-water and introduced an organics composting system. Reducing our use of single-use plastic water bottles is the next step in this great challenge.’ - Georgie Martin, Assistant Venue Manager at The Corner Hotel
