Ultra Music Festival Wins World Sustainability Award

Ultra Music Festival is adding another victory to its legacy by winning the World Sustainability Award for its Mission: Home program!

While many look to Ultra Music Festival as an industry leader in the dance music scene for cultivating high-quality lineups that showcase the sounds of tomorrow, there’s more than meets the eye to this experience in Miami. Beyond the artists, stages, art, and more that are present at the festival is a deep-rooted sense of responsibility to make sure that they keep the community clean through sustainability efforts. In 2019, Ultra took this to the next level with Mission: Home, and to say it’s been a success would be an understatement.

This past year, Ultra Music Festival’s Mission: Home program diverted over 56,000 pounds of trash from landfills while drastically reducing the number of plastic cups, bottles, straws, and more while also recycling oil, creating compost, and donating supplies. Their team’s achievement in 2023 was recognized by the World Sustainability Leaders Congress, as they were named one of 13 winners selected from a pool of 220 applicants from 35 countries.

Ultra Music Festival took home the Sustainability Team Award, beating out other major companies like Paramount, TELUS, Stryker, and Dentsu. At the core of this award is the team behind the Mission: Home program, which is run by four women from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. Their team’s ability to rally everyone from external vendors and event staff to community partners and festival attendees has left a lasting impression and helped make significant progress toward a sustainable future.

Ultra Music Festival’s lean but agile sustainability team has worked with a host of partners both within and outside the organization to drive tangible changes in areas ranging from eliminating [nearly] 90% of single-use plastics from its site to diverting 180,000 pounds of waste from landfill and supporting local communities with food and beverage donations. The team has also trained more than 1,000 colleagues on sustainability while raising awareness on sustainability issues in an external-facing campaign that reached an audience of 6 million people.
World Sustainability Leaders

Mission: Home’s biggest impact is on the ground at Ultra Music Festival, where they educate attendees on sustainability initiatives through communication and partner with Clean Vibes to handle waste and recycling management. Other partners include Replenysh, a platform that traces where recyclable materials end up, as well as Best Beverage Catering and other compliant food vendors who have reduced single-use plastic waste by 88%. Event Water Solutions and Hope Hydration provide free water refills for attendees, while The Caring Place has been the recipient of over 6,200 meals’ worth of donated food.

Additionally, the program’s reach goes well beyond the grounds of Bayfront Park as content from the program has found a home on the UMFTV livestream, which garners a global audience of millions.

Our ‘Mission: Home’ program has become part of the fabric of our organization. I could not be more proud to be recognized as an industry leader on this global stage.
Ultra’s Founder and CEO, Russell Faibisch

Mission: Home will return to Ultra Music Festival on March 22-24 for its fourth iteration at Bayfront Park. This year, the program looks to grow even more with new initiatives centered on Waste Reduction, Pollution Prevention, Nature Preservation, Community Engagement, and Climate Action.

Check out the stats from Mission: Home’s 2023 Sustainability Report and head to their official website for more details on this program!

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