GREEN

Let’s be honest, our primary mission is to create a 3-day long party where everyone feels welcome. We want to make sure that young and old visitors from every social, ethnic, political or religious background retrieve a safe space that allows them to discover live music they wouldn’t see anywhere else - and have a grand old party! The mere fact of organizing a music festival will always have a negative impact on our environment. But we can try to make this impact as low as possible, and try to arrive at a point where the social and psychological benefits outweigh the - hopefully - minor environmental disadvantages.

Couleur's fundamental value is respect. With the relocation to the beautiful and protected Osseghem Park, our investment has become even more solid. Every year, at all levels, we look for new ways to reduce our ecological footprint and try to positively influence the public's long-term sustainability behaviour.

Discover all the efforts we are making for 2026:

Recycling

The site includes more than 150 eco-volunteers.
120 sorting islands are provided for festival-goers.
The festival includes a container park with 7 sorting containers: PMC, paper and cardboard, residual waste, oils, wood, and glass.
90% of the waste is sorted, and 95% of the remaining 10% is recycled.
40 people clean the park every morning.

Food

The Rue du Bien Manger had 40 sorting islands with 3 different fractions: blue (PMC = cans, plastic bottles), green (biodegradable food, plates, cutlery, and straws), and black (residual waste).
All used plates, cups and cutlery are biodegradable.
The food trucks, like every year, offer a wide variety of vegetarian/vegan food.
We require the use of local and biological ingredients.
Due to their high emissions, the use of beef and products imported by air is strictly prohibited.

You can find more information about food and sustainability here.

DRINKS

Just like previous years, we implement the reusable cup system. Each festival-goer receives a free eco-token that has the value of one cup.
In case of loss, a new cup can be purchased for the price of half of a drink ticket.
We always strongly advise festival-goers to bring their own water bottles and fill them at our drinking water taps, provided with the support of Vivaqua.
Our straws are biodegradable.

Ashtrays

250 homemade ashtrays are hung from trees on the festival site.
15,000 free portable and reusable ashtrays are available at the information stands and entrances. This year, we recycle empty film canisters as ashtrays!
FYI, these ashtrays are not disposable. Empty your ashtray when it’s full, so you can keep using it!
Throwing cigarette butts on the ground is strictly PROHIBITED.

The park

Osseghem Park is protected by 8 guards and their team during build-up, breakdown, and the festival itself to protect the trees, roots, and grass.
Urinating in the park is strictly prohibited; access to toilets is completely free.

Mobility

We advise festival-goers to avoid taking the car. It is more eco-conscious and often easier to take public transportation to get to the festival.
The festival provides a bike parking service with free and secure spaces.

Camping

Sorting islands are provided for festival-goers.
Eco-responsible volunteers ensure the cleanliness of the campsite.
All camping equipment that is left in good condition is collected and redistributed to those in need.

Infrastructure

The decorations are recycled and reused.
The American Theatre is used as a backstage area, reducing the number of used trucks and minimizing damage to the park.
Couleur Café cooperates with the Brossela festival, which reuses one of our stages.

Carbon Footprint

In 2023, we called upon Tapio to calculate the carbon footprint of Couleur Café. We chose to openly share all findings and key insights. Our carbon strategy page is available here. In short:

Our overall footprint was 471,15 tons of CO2. While this might seem like a lot, it is actually impressively low compared to other big cultural and sports events.
The report excludes the daily footprint of our non-profit organisation vzw Zig Zag asbl, since we also organise other events.
A very recent French report "Rapport Déclic" estimated an average of 720 tons of CO2 for comparable music festivals.

Data was incomplete for part of the restaurants, mobility and certain goods. This leads to an uncertainty of 17%, which is more than acceptable for a first calculation.
Divided by 69.000 visitors, this means every visitor had a carbon footprint of 6.93 kilos per day. Again, a pretty good result.

Of course we are not planning on stopping here: the goal is to get this number down even more. By investing more in vegetarian dishes, public transportation, energy and artist mobility, we aim to diminish it by another 5% every year.

Want to learn more? You can download the full report here.

Why Cristal?

Cristal is a Belgian beer brewed in Alken since 1928.
Since 2021, Cristal has been the only Belgian pilsner to carry the official "Belgian Hop" logo, thanks to its use of locally grown hops. Additionally, one third of its pilsners are brewed with Belgian barley.
Cristal brews its beer using 100% green Belgian electricity.
Their goal is to achieve CO2 neutrality by 2030 and support a sustainable future by investing in the agriculture of tomorrow.