As the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival kicked off on Earth Day, organizers and attendees worked to raise sustainability awareness to reducing environmental footprints at the massive festival.

Since 2004, Los Angeles nonprofit Global Inheritance has collaborated with Coachella to get attendees engaged in environmental efforts. Through staples such as their energy playground, recycling bins decorated by local artists, “Carpoolchella” and more, the group has helped attendees engage in impactful sustainability efforts.

Eric Ritz, Global Inheritance’s executive director, said that the program’s goal is to provide a “fun and accessible” way for people to get involved.

“People spend a lot of money to be at the festival … so we have to compete with that and make the program really exciting,” Ritz said.

Each weekend of the festival Global Inheritance commissions local artists to decorate 50 unique recycling bins that are displayed throughout the festival grounds.

John Galan, an art teacher from Oak Park, was in his first year collaborating with Global Inheritance. After being selected in 2021, his fruit-inspired human anatomy bin design was finally unveiled Friday.

“I was looking to talk about the way we eat,” Galan said. “Health food in general is usually more sustainable since in general it comes packaged with less plastic.”

His design used fruits from his Mexican and Spanish heritage to display cactus in the shape of lungs, a pomegranate heart and a huitlacoche brain (huitlacoche is an edible fungus that grows on corn).

Returning Orange County artist Fae Feliciano wanted to bring her art back to the festival because she liked the “initiative” that the nonprofit was trying to take, she said.

“I like to use my art to promote sustainability,” Feliciano said.

Her 2022 bin displayed a tropical scene and promoted her passions of recycling, music, art and love, Feliciano said.

Global Inheritance’s interactive energy playground also caught the attention of many festival goers. Since 2007, the playground has featured stations that involve running, cycling, seesawing, turning, and swinging that converts kinetic energy into electricity. This year’s energy playground featured a set of seesaws that charged participants’ phones with the up-and-down motion.

Mario Vilela from San Francisco took the seesaw out for a try, and while he didn’t use it long enough to make much of an impact on his phone battery, he still thought it was a neat idea.

“I think it’s a great concept to promote renewable energy,” Vilela said.

In an effort to reduce travel emissions, Global Inheritance encourages carpooling through its “Carpoolchella” program. Carpoolers are entered into a sweepstake to win a variety of prizes, which includes “VIP for life” to the festival, “all-access” wristbands and gift and food vouchers.

At the campground, Global Inheritance had a stage set up for a speaker series on sustainability efforts. On Saturday, April 23, Maggie Baird, mother of singer Billie Eilish, is set to speak on behalf of her non-profit Support + Feed, which focuses on food and waste, according to Ritz.

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