Sustainability at Butik Festival

Butik Festival is taking place in Soča Valley, at one of the most beautiful festival locations in the world. At Butik, you will be surrounded by breathtaking nature. This is why we want to take extra care of the environment.

The festival site is just a short walk from town Tolmin and there are a couple of other villages nearby. This means that our festival also impacts the lives of local people. The local community has been supportive throughout the years and we really appreciate this. We want to be able to organize the festival here for many years to come, so we try to do our best to lower the negative impacts.

We as the organizers cannot do this alone, so we kindly ask all festival goers to read through our measures related to sustainability.

1. We respect nature and local community

The Tolmin town is a charming little town nestled in the mountains, which turns into the festival capital of Slovenia for a month in summer. For some, this is something that they appreciate, and for others, it is an unnecessary distraction in their routine. We are aware that music festivals come with loud music, so we agreed with the municipality to shut down outdoor music after 1 AM.

Like with everything else, there are always some prejudices about festivals and festival-goers, but so far, we are doing a great job of proving to locals that our festival-goers are very respectful to local communities and the environment. Thank you for cooperating with us and enabling our festival to continue here in this beautiful location.

2. Giving back to the community - festival fund

Together with festival Punk Rock Holiday and Tolminator we created the 'Festival Fund' initiative. All the money that is left on paycards after the festival is donated to the local community. In the past two years, we donated more than 25.000 €. We let the locals decide which NGOs should receive the funds.

The selection was rather diverse - from rescue dogs, the local football club, breast cancer awareness organization, firefighters, association for helping people with disabilities, model gliders.. to humanitarian organizations for the underprivileged. And when we say 'we donated', this includes you, People of Butik. So thanks to everyone who joined the initiative. The money left on paycards is now in good hands.

The festival fund initiative is something that puts smiles on many faces (including ours), so we will continue with it in the future.

3. Reusable cups and biodegradable packaging

In 2021 we finally found a provider for reusable cups and introduced them to the Butik Festival. This reduced waste drastically. All food vendors at the festival use biodegradable packaging for serving food.

4. Cup deposit*

Everytime you order a drink from the bar you pay a 'cup deposit' that is returned to you when you return the container to the cup deposit station. This means that the festival site is clean throughout the whole festival. We don't want the festival site to look like a landfill at any time. We want everyone to enjoy the beautiful nature without plastic cups lying around.

5. Garbage deposit*

Each person who stays in the festival campsite deposits a garbage deposit upon entry and receives two trash bags - one for plastic and one for mixed trash. Before leaving the festival, you return full bags to the garbage center and you will get the deposit back. The point of this measure is to equip all campers with garbage bags and motivate you to keep the festival site clean at all times. Again, the Butik campsite is such a dreamy place in nature - near the river and under the trees - please respect this and keep it clean at all times.

6. Drinkable tap water*

There is drinking tap water available in the campsite and inside the festival area. This means that you don't have to bring water in plastic bottles from the supermarket. Just fill your containers.

7. Rent-a-tent*

People from all around the world visit Butik, which means that there are many fly-ins. To avoid single use tents that are left behind on the festival site, we started offering a rent-a-tent service.

8. Electricity in the campsite to avoid petrol generators*

We do not allow petrol generators in the campsite. First reason is to avoid petrol, second one is because they are really loud. The noise can be irritating to your camping neighbors, but it sure irritates locals from Tolmin who live close to the festival site. There were complaints in the past for the noise coming from the campsite throughout the whole night, so please keep that in mind also with your speakers.

9. Clean up after season

Together with other festival organizers mentioned above we organize a clean up after the season, to really make sure that no trash was left behind.

* Check Festival A-Z to get more info about this.