Sustainable development and eco-responsibility

Chants de Vielles is a pioneer in Quebec in the organization of eco-responsible events.

Bières Photo: CDV 2019. Guillaume Morin

From the very first year, the organization put in place concrete means to minimize the environmental impact of its festival. As early as 2004, it was offering composting, washable dishes rented from food aid organizations and water bottle refilling, among other things. Many other means have since been added, making Chants de Vielles a key player in the fight against climate change, recognized as such by the growing number of festival-goers who share its environmental values.

In 2006, the festival integrated its now iconic reusable mug into the bar, and organized a musical instrument-making activity for children using recycled objects and plants found on the site.

spectateurs Photo: Noémie martineau CDV 2022

Since its arrival in the Vallée-du-Richelieu MRC (2013), Chants de Vielles has consolidated some of its activities through new partnerships:

  • Filling water bottles;
  • Composting valorization system (collaboration with the municipality of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, then with the MRC de La Vallée-du-Richelieu);
  • Introduction of biocompostable cutlery for the volunteer canteen AND food concessions;
  • Introduction of the Ecocup glass system (collaboration with Bonduelle, now Nortera);
  • Promotion of carpooling.
Bénévoles Photo: CDV2022_J-F Lemire

Commitment & innovation

Chants de Vielles continually seeks innovative and engaging ways to distinguish itself in terms of sustainable development and to raise awareness among volunteers and the public, encouraging them to do the same:

  • Production of flags (pennant garlands) using t-shirts from previous editions;
  • Introduction of volunteer identification buttons (compostable with wildflower seeds).
camping Photo: Guillaume Morin

In 2020, keen to take its thinking further, affirm its commitment and better document its sustainable development actions, Chants de Vielles embarked on a process including:

Since then, Chants de Vielles has multiplied its sustainable actions...

Awareness-raising and training for various stakeholders (volunteers, organizing committee, board of directors)
Development of tools for compiling statistics and other data to document eco-responsible actions and their impacts
Weighing and accounting for residual materials (in 2023, only 1.5 bins of waste for the entire festival! Wow!)
Partnership with Consignaction to recover returnable containers (in 2023, 98% of cans were recovered)

A long-term
approach

The sustainable development approach is in line with the actions implemented by the organization since its very beginnings. Chants de Vielles’ unwavering desire to play a positive role in its community motivates it to go further and contribute ever more actively to building a better society. Thus, while maintaining the actions already in place, Chants de Vielles aims to:

  • Aim for 100% recovery or reuse of used packaging (bars, canteen).
  • Offset greenhouse gas emissions generated by the event by planting trees.
  • Optimize the collection of information through ticketing in order to measure participants’ transportation as accurately as possible.