KUCHING, June 13: Every RM10 collected from each RM25 virtual ticket for Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) and Borneo Jazz Festival (BJF) will be donated towards Sarawak Tourism Board’s (STB) ecoGreenPlanet tree-planting programme.
The tree-planting activity itself will be held after the festivals.
RWMF and BJF’s sponsors also contributed to this tree-planting initiative, in which at least 2,000 plants are being sponsored by companies for the programme.
STB chief executive officer (CEO) Sharzede Salleh Askor said through this initiative, STB continues to pursue its agenda on responsible tourism and sustainability by incorporating a new approach in creating awareness on environmental issues via a digital platform.
“As RWMF and BJ are both in hybrid format this year, we would like to be inclusive by giving the opportunity to online audiences to also contribute towards our environmental efforts, which previously can only be done by physical festival-goers,” she said in a statement today.
This year, at the RWMF 2022 venue Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV), STB will continue its eco-friendly initiatives that were started in 2019 such as sustainable procurement, waste management strategy, food composting, green ambassadorship as well as efforts to reduce carbon emissions and upcycling of materials.
One of the main greening initiatives is the installation of water stations throughout the SCV, in collaboration with Canard Media Sdn Bhd, to discourage the purchase of single-use water bottles and help reduce the number of plastic bottles.
Therefore, festival-goers are highly encouraged to bring along their own water tumblers to the festival where they can fill up their bottles at the water stations for free.
Festival-goers may also purchase limited edition collapsible cups and tiffins at the festival.
Meanwhile, WormingUp, a Kuching-based social enterprise, will be collecting food waste from the festival to be converted into bio-protein for fertiliser and animal feed for local farmers.
Through another initiative named Moop (Matter out of Place), patrols will ensure the festival site is kept exactly how it was before the festival by working together with festival-goers to clear up the festival site at the end of the daily events.
As it has been implemented during the previous festivals, shuttle buses will ferry festival-goers from the city centre and from nearby locations to the festival grounds to alleviate carbon emissions and prevent congestion at the venue site.
For BJF 2022, there will be an Eco-Art installation project in collaboration with Miri City Council and MYY Living Arts, as a continuation of the Borneo Jazz Beat Plastic Campaign initiated in 2019, as part of the Borneo Jazz festival’s responsible tourism’ programme to reinforce sustainable and eco-friendly initiatives for the city.
Themed ‘Trashing the Jungle’, this programme is a reminder that plastics which make daily living convenient also choke and pollute the natural environment through human actions. The objective of this eco-project is to re-purpose recyclable plastic waste and make art with it.
Another initiative is the ECO DRUMS, an eco-friendly initiative and community music outreach programme with Lewis Pragasam and FAB LAB artists at Coco Cabana, to create unique drums and percussion instruments from recycled waste and to produce feel-good beats from community drumming sessions as a lead up to BJF 2022. — DayakDaily
