Greening of the Pride Toronto Festival: Lessons Learned

Pride Toronto is one of Canada's biggest festivals, drawing in over 1 million people. This festival attempted to become the greenest festival in Canada by achieving zero waste and carbon neutrality by 2015. Despite specific goals, funding, and expertise along with a carbon, waste, and benchmark audit, the festival failed to continue greening its operations. This article, using a case study approach, outlines findings that include a misalignment of sustainability values as part of their corporate culture. In addition, other politics and power struggles within the organization overrode sustainability efforts. Recommendations include having an inside leader to spearhead sustainability efforts and that greening must become a core initiative rather than a side project of a festival to ensure success. Conclusions suggest that despite the support from government and a not-for-profit organization, the efforts made were still unsuccessful. lessons learned from this case study can be applied on a world-wide basis as a lack of awareness about sustainability, stakeholders with conflicting interests, bureaucracy, and politics can all hinder a greening program.