Case Study: Woodford Folk Festival Reuse Systems

Situation and Challenge

The Woodford Folk Festival is the largest annual gathering of artists and musicians in Australia, attracting tens of thousands of patrons each year to the Woodfordia site in Queensland. With a temporary city emerging each December, managing waste, packaging and single-use materials presents significant operational challenges.

Woodfordia has long demonstrated leadership in environmental stewardship, regenerating over 140,000 trees, a 500 year plan, and embedding reuse and waste avoidance into festival operations over decades.

The festival avoids more than 250,000 single-use cups each year through reusable cup systems supported by established on-site washing infrastructure.

Even with reuse already normalised across the festival, Woodfordia continues to explore ways to reduce waste from the outset. This includes patron engagement and trialling additional infrastructure and approaches that make reuse even easier for patrons and vendors to participate in.

In 2025, this included a small trial wash station at the Chai tent, to make it easier for patrons to wash Chai tent cups and their own personal reusables.

This is relatively unheard of at large events and precincts; so there was no precedent set, this was a first!

Our Approach

Bel is long standing attendee of the festival, and was selected for Woodfordia’s talks program in 2023. Through this, she formed relationships with the site operations and waste management ‘Garbology’ teams. In 2024 and 2025, she was invited back to support these teams deliver their waste update to festival patrons, and help support the festival reduce waste.

This has been across multiple disciplines across the Festival:

Advisory on new reuse infrastructure

• Reviewing and providing practical feedback on a new Chai Tent wash station trial, introduced to complement the festival’s existing washing infrastructure and support BYO

• Observing how patrons interacted with the trial infrastructure and providing feedback on accessibility, signage and practical usability

• Sharing insights on how infrastructure, behaviour and messaging work together to keep reuse normal and effective at scale

Festival talks program

• Designing the narrative and content to open the Festival Talks Program, with the ‘Waste at Woodfordia’ session - discussing the national context of packaging sustainability, event waste, developments in policy and legislation across Australian States and Woodford’s progress 
• Helping patrons better understand the role reuse systems play in reducing single-use waste at events, and why replacing single-use plastics with compostable packaging isn’t a ‘silver bullet’ 

Understanding waste operations to improve opportunity 

• Working with the garbology team to understand operations, and provide calls to action for stage Emcees to help Woodfordians participate in waste and recycling systems more effectively 
• Working hands-on with the garbology team to remove metal tags from ice bags, so they could be recovered by the waste contractor 

Amplifying the message beyond the Festival

Sharing insights with the broader industry following the festival to showcase and celebrate Woodfordia – including across social media, in particular LinkedIn:

‘When you come back from the best festival on Earth, and your highlight was a sink’

The goal was to further build on Woodford’s foundations, support a practical trial, while encouraging the cultural and behavioural foundations that make reuse systems successful.

Bel’s Unique Value

Bel brings more than two decades of experience working with people across waste systems, circular economy strategy and packaging sustainability. She also understands the festival’s unique culture and leadership.

She can bring the big picture and the ‘how’ - her expertise spans both policy and practice, including national packaging frameworks, implementing reuse systems and complex operational environments such as large organisations and major public events.

Importantly, Bel understands that successful circular systems rely not only on infrastructure but also on behaviour, culture and clear communication. Her ability to translate complex sustainability concepts, combined with passion and sense of fun, play a crucial role in transitioning Woodfordia along its sustainability journey.

The result

The opening talk attracted a keen audience of ongoing advocates and new patrons, with lots of questions following, and an informed cohort ready to trial the wash station, inform others and provide feedback.

The Chai Tent wash station provided a small but thoughtful addition to Woodfordia’s already well-established reuse system, allowing patrons to rinse and clean reusable items at the point of use.

The trial demonstrated how simple infrastructure can complement existing washing systems and further support reuse behaviour among festival-goers.

Feedback from the trial will help inform future improvements to infrastructure and patron engagement, ensuring reuse remains convenient, visible and normal within the festival environment.

Watch this space!