Trash talk in 2026: Our journey towards more sustainable events

Mon 25 May 2026

Last year we talked trash. This year, we made even more progress. 

As Perth Festival continues its journey towards more sustainable events, we're proud to share the environmental wins from our 2026 season at East Perth Power Station. 

The venue welcomed more audiences than ever before, with attendance up 19% on 2025. More people means more energy, more experiences—and inevitably, more waste. The challenge is making sure as little of it as possible ends up in landfill. 

Working alongside our sustainability partner Write Solutions, we continued to improve how waste is managed across the site, delivering some impressive results: 

  • 35,600 cans returned for recycling – achieving a 100% return rate on all cans sold onsite.  

  • 70% of waste diverted from landfill – a strong result considering significant growth in attendance and venue activity.  

  • 15,840 litres of food organics and garden organics (FOGO) collected – now on its way to becoming nutrient-rich compost instead of landfill.  

We also introduced an onsite glass crusher for the first time, dramatically reducing transport volumes while improving operational efficiency behind the scenes. 

Across the venue, food vendors continued to use compostable packaging, water refill stations helped reduce single-use plastic consumption, and audiences embraced more sustainable ways to travel. Cycling remained a popular choice, and we're already exploring ways to expand bike parking to meet growing demand in future years. 

These initiatives may seem small on their own, but together they make a meaningful difference. Every can recycled, every meal container composted and every bike parked instead of car driven contributes to a Festival that treads more lightly on the places we gather. 

Creating extraordinary cultural experiences and caring for our environment go hand in hand. We're committed to learning, improving and building on these results each year so Perth Festival can continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. 

Thanks for being part of the journey. We'll see you at the next Festival.