Download the “Labor Tempelhof” guidebook here.

It’s always great to get the support of famous artists to bring sustainability to a bigger audience. In Germany, two of the longest-performing and most famous bands, Die Ärzte and Die Toten Hosen, agreed to test different sustainability solutions at three of their shows on the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. Under the name “Labor Tempelhof” the project published its experiences and results in a guidebook. Tabea Kaplan (Loft Concerts & Labor Tempelhof) presented many of their learnings in the 2024 GO Group workshop in Bratislava (read the full report).

The project started in August 2022, on the grounds of the former Tempelhof Airport. Three sold-out shows à 60,000 people were planned, but the second one had to be cancelled last minute due to a severe thunderstorm. “It was a tough moment, but it confirmed that we were doing the right thing with the lab,” Tabea said. Four partners run the project: KKT, Loft Concerts, Side by Side Eventsupport, and Cradle to Cradle NGO. “The goal is to hold large concerts in the most sustainable way, make production circular and resource-positive, and test sustainable solutions for their scalability,” Tabea further explained.

According to her, the team paid an extra €650,000 for sustainability measures. They wanted to share the lessons they learned in the guidebook, despite knowing that not everyone is capable of doing the same. An impact measurement offers a transparent account of the project, including both the successes and shortcomings, so it can be used as a blueprint to follow by the event industry. The guidebook also includes helpful contacts of service providers that were involved in “Labor Tempelhof.”

The project followed the ‘Cradle to Cradle (C2C)’ principle and covered nine areas, which Tabea also summarized in her presentation: Mobility & Logistics, Energy, Catering & Food, Waste Management & Nutrient Circularity, Event Technology & Production Materials, Social Sustainability: Equity & Inclusion, Communication & Education, Sanitation & Water, and Merchandise & Textiles. Impacts were measured in six areas, including but not limited to carbon dioxide emissions.

Please refer to the guidebook to find a list of all the applied measures and respective learnings. Some key learnings shall be highlighted here:

• Mobility & Logistics: Audience travel causes the most CO₂ emissions, and the event location strongly influences the mobility behavior.
• Energy: Turned out to be the “most complex process in the production.” Getting green energy from the grid requires kilometers worth of cables, and Germany currently lacks a nationwide delivery system for hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) for generators.
• Catering & Food: “If the food tastes good, vegetarian and vegan food is accepted,” Tabea said. Even by rock stars. And: free drinking water did not have a negative impact on overall drink sales – everybody had one free cup of water and then mostly bought an extra beer.
• Sanitation & Water: The fans apparently didn’t wash their hands enough for the osmosis water recycling system to start working (they ended up with 800 of the required 850 liters).
• Waste Management & Nutrient Circularity: The on-site waste separation worked well as long as it was supervised. After the volunteers left to watch the concerts at 8 p.m. and the audience was drunk, the recycling center needed to be fenced off and watched.
• Social Sustainability: If you offer awareness concepts like “Which way to Panama” and use WhatsApp channels and hotlines for communication with the audience, e.g. on accessibility questions, you shouldn’t underestimate the workload. Before the event, this resulted in a 4-5-week fulltime job. Tabea’s recommendation: include people with disabilities in your team to increase accessibility long-term, make more service providers aware of accessibility and diversity issues, and book artists with a diverse line-up as support acts.
• Merchandise & Textiles: The team produced 20,000 C2C shirts with the band design, according to Tabea the largest production of C2C shirts in Europe so far. The fiber can be reused, the shirts are 100% compostable, and 99% of the water needed in production is used circularly. However, the shirts take longer to produce, you are not very flexible on demand, and they cost about three times as much. At least the cost decreases the larger the print run is, so if more artists, festivals etc. came together, it would get cheaper. The team didn’t add the extra production costs onto the t-shirt price.
• Communication: “You need a transparent and positive communication strategy,” for good communication with the team, contractors and the public. “Using artists’ platform is a dream,” and according to Tabea should be the target for the future, because “the artist’s voice is the voice we have in the industry.”

She concluded saying that luckily, many products and processes to make events as climate-friendly as possible already exist. “If every event was carried out according to these standards, over 50% of carbon dioxide impact could now be saved.” Yet, there is still a great need for political action to make the project’s standards the standards for everyone. Also: sustainability measures still create higher costs, so in the following events there will be additional costs included in the ticket.

“Labor Tempelhof” will return in 2024 with three more shows by Die Ärzte on August 23-25.