Solidarity With The Earth

It’s impossible for Unsound to ignore the fact that we generate a carbon footprint through our operation to bring thousands of artists and festival attendees to Krakow each year. Even the most ecologically-conscious festival will have an environmental impact, which is why Unsound has engaged the Aeris Futuro Foundation to collate data to estimate our festival’s total carbon emissions. (For more information about the Foundation’s work, please visit their website.) With the help of our city, audience and artists we will attempt to offset this by planting trees in an area designated for this purpose by the Kraków Municipal Greenspace Authority. The trees will be planted in the spring of 2020. 

According to Aeris Futuro’s pre-festival calculations, the overall carbon footprint of Unsound is 1040 tons of CO2 - this data is based on the travel of the audience members, artists, guests and media, as well as overall usage of energy and resources to produce the festival. The vast majority of this footprint is a result of our audience travelling to Krakow by flying - which is why we need to involve you in this initiative.

Aeris Futuro has created four simple packages through which you can offer your support:

But Aeris Futuro has also made a list of popular destinations from which our audience travels to the city, with a breakdown of the amount of carbon your return journey produces. You can precisely offset this amount either by purchasing multiple packages where necessary, or directly transferring funds into a dedicated bank account set up for this purpose. If your point of origin is not included on the list and you would like to know the amount of carbon produced by your trip and the amount needed to offset it, feel free to write to us at [email protected].

Here are the destinations:

• Amsterdam - 20 PLN - 4 plants
• Athens - 25 PLN - 5 plants
• Barcelona - 30 PLN - 6 plants
• Berlin - 15 PLN - 3 plants
• Bratislava - 5 PLN - 1 plant
• Kampala - 80 PLN - 16 plants
• Kiev - 15 PLN - 3 plants
• London - 25 PLN - 5 plants
• Minsk - 15 PLN - 3 plants
• Moscow - 25 PLN - 5 plants
• New York - 100 PLN - 20 plants
• Oslo - 25 PLN - 5 plants
• Paris - 25 PLN - 5 plants
• Prague - 10 PLN - 2 plants
• Rome - 20 PLN - 4 plants
• Sydney - 220 PLN - 44 plants
• Stockholm - 20 PLN - 4 plants

And this is the bank account:

Account owner: Fundacja Tone- Muzyka i Nowe Formy Sztuki 

Account number: IBAN PL60 1240 4533 1111 0010 9364 3509 

SWIFT/BIC: PKOPPLPW

Bank address: ul. Pijarska 1, 31-015 Kraków

All funds go to the purchase of trees, and we will give updates on the amount of money raised, number of trees planted, and to what degree this offsets the festival’s carbon emissions.

We are taking the following additional steps to lower Unsound’s carbon footprint:

• No water or soft drinks will be sold in plastic bottles. Thanks to our collaboration with the Kraków Waterworks, you will be able to refill a reusable water container - glass and metal containers will not be allowed. Note, in order to limit waste we will not provide disposable cups next to water containers - so please come prepared with a container.
• No plastic beer cups - all cups will be made from compostable corn starch.
• Unsound will offer vegetarian/vegan catering only at Hotel Forum.
• We encourage everyone to use city bikes, walk or take public transport where it is possible.

Those are only small steps, but necessary. Please send us any comments or ideas on how we can make further improvements in the future to [email protected].

As part of a long-term strategy to reduce the environmental impact of Unsound, we’re also encouraging other Krakow festivals to join us in developing this initiative further. We also hope to communicate with others festivals from around the world, sharing knowledge and collaborating to ensure that our events can function in the most environmentally-friendly way possible - please contact us if you are running a festival and have built or want to develop a similar initiative.