Ultra’s Sustainability Program ‘Mission: HOME’ Stands Out Among America’s Dance Music Festivals

Since launching in 2019, Mission: Home has become a national leader in sustainability efforts at Ultra Music Festival Miami.

As effects of climate change continue to impact the planet, it’s more important than ever to enact sustainability measures wherever possible. Music festivals can be notorious for excess waste production, but Ultra’s Mission:Home is trying to change that. Started in 2019, this sustainability program has worked to make changes to decrease Ultra Music Festival’s environmental impact.

Though there is still a long way to go to making events more sustainable, Mission:Home is being celebrated as a leading effort. They have successfully reduced 526,000 plastic items from the waste stream, diverted more than 60,000 pounds of waste from landfill, achieved an impressive 100% acceptance of recycling loads at the local facility, and reached more than 2.7 million people worldwide.

This year at Ultra Miami, Mission: Home successfully implemented 30 sustainability initiatives, making it the most extensive sustainability program across America’s leading dance music festivals. They took waste management to a whole new level by donating over 22,500 pounds of unused food, drinks and supplies to local community partners.

When it came to cutting back on waste, Mission: Home returned with water refill stations and bans on both Styrofoam and plastic. More than 1.1 million plastic items have been eliminated from the waste stream thanks to these initiatives. Their Leave No Trace campaign returned this year with elevated messaging, new cigarette disposal towers, educational displays on the local ecosystem, and temporary storm drain screens to prevent pollution from entering the Biscayne Bay.

To their objectives of Waste Reduction, Pollution Prevention, Nature Preservation, Community Engagement, this year Mission: Home added Climate Action. This new focus saw Ultra take a deeper look into energy efficiency and carbon offsetting projects. Ultra Miami attendees could step into a VR experience to learn more about their own carbon footprint, and were given tools to do their own offsetting using Ultra portal within Climate Future’s 1PLANET app.

Mission: Home’s ultimate goal is to “to expand the environmental consciousness of everyone [their] programs reach, positively shifting behavior both on and off festival grounds.” Between both the 2022 and 2019 festivals, ‘Mission: Home’ has reached over 5.5 million people, and with each coming year, their impact will only grow.

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