The Heineken ‘Greener Bar’ Puts Sustainability Centre Stage of Heineken's Experiential Marketing

Heineken has become one of Electric Picnic’s most anticipated brand and music experiences year on year. New for 2022 “The Greener Bar” at Electric Picnic will be Heineken’s most sustainable bar yet. 

The Greener Bar is born out of “Brew a Better World”; Heineken’s global sustainability strategy and as part of it, the brand has ambitious targets to reduce its carbon impact. Here in Ireland, the company is committed to brew with zero emissions by 2030.  As part of this, Heineken has designed a new, greener festival activation that doesn’t compromise on Heineken’s iconic festival experience, service and entertainment but delivers it on a minimal carbon budget. 

Heineken partners Thinkhouse, Honey & Buzz, Exhibit and Red Star worked together on the project to deliver, what promises to be, an epic, greener festival experience.

Heineken's marketing team have completely reevaluated how the brand is showing up in the world, using learnings from the break from events during Covid, and taking time to unpick how the brand can be a part of a greener planet. Heineken are working closely with sustainability consultants during Electric Picnic to enable the brand to take insight and learnings from this year’s activation and help to inform all future experiential activities, placing sustainability at the core of the brand’s XP. Heineken believes that festival activations can carry the same level of epic entertainment while considering the impact on the environment.

Brewing a Better Festival Experience 

The activation will make its debut at Electric Picnic and Heineken has reimagined how the festival experience can be greener by taking a new, innovative approach to: 

1: Design & Construction (The Greener Bar)

2: Artist and Entertainment Production

This transformative new way of working demonstrates Heineken’s ambition, and unrelenting commitment, to realising new circular, low-carbon, entertainment experience. By reducing waste and energy use Heineken aims to save an estimated 23,646kg of CO2 emissions - the equivalent emissions from over 4,600 homes' electricity for a year or the equivalent savings to the carbon sequestered by over 390,000 tree seedlings grown for 10 years*.  

The Greener Bar 

The Greener Bar utilises the best innovations in circular design and building methods, materials and technologies to reduce waste, water and energy use. 

10 THINGS THAT MAKE THE GREENER BAR GREENER:

Waste Savings: By Design, the Heineken Greener Bar aims to save up  to 9,760kg of plastic event waste - the equivalent to the daily waste of 11,132 average individuals in Ireland. 

Emissions Savings: By reducing waste and energy use Heineken aims to save an estimated 23,646.85kg of CO2 emissions - the equivalent emissions from over 4,600 homes' electricity for a year or the equivalent savings to the carbon sequestered by over 390,000 tree seedlings grown for 10 years.  

Energy Savings: The bar is achieving an estimated 90% reduction in fuel emissions (v’s regular fuel) and over 60% LESS energy emissions than previous years  by using bio generators, a customised smart power plan to reduce unnecessary waste, custom built lower emission lighting rig and LED screens.

Reusable Cups: Using Reusable Cups means a reduction in the amount of single use plastic at the bar by at least 20,000 cups from 2019. 

Circular Design & Construction: Heineken is keeping waste down by designing the bar to fit the materials, not the other way around. Everything in the space has had a life before or will have a life long after the bar is gone. Shipping containers have been repurposed from previous Heineken events - each container has seen 16+ individual activations! The containers also double up as transport to site for building materials. Furniture was created with used off-cuts from existing timber studs, salvaged from existing Heineken shipping containers. Old furniture from past events is also being used and everything will be reused or recycled after the festival.

Travel Emissions Reduction via Local Artists: An effort has been made to drastically reduce travel emissions. The production plan has removed international travel emissions from previous years by only supporting local musicians and artists to perform at the Greener Bar.

Roof: The roof of The Greener Bar has been used on 4 separate occasions for Heineken and is a rental item. It keeps the rain off and collects grey water to keep the plantlife green.

Zero Waste Uniforms: The uniforms for staff are all made with a mix of 80-100% organic cotton and recycled polyester. These uniforms will all be reused at future Greener Bar events.

Artwork & Material Innovation: Material for banners and signage was created with a 50% recycled polyester yarn from waste bottles. Artwork at the stage was built using a combination of plantlife, recycled bottle caps and cans, upcycled mirrors and birch ply wooden features. 

Plantlife & Ballast Bags: The traditional water-based ballast structure of the bar has been replaced with soil and plants. These bags will be used across the lifespan of the bar to save water. 

Ronan McCormack, marketing manager, Heineken Ireland: “Experiences have always been a huge part of the Heineken Ireland marketing mix. We wanted our festival comeback to be ambitious and to reflect who we have become as a company. As part of “Brew a Better World” we’re working on brewing our beer here in Ireland with zero emissions by 2030. Festival activations like The Heineken Greener Bar demonstrates how our sustainability commitments are being delivered impactfully through our brand activities. It’s taken a lot of unlearning and reworking how we do things - the effort has been enormous and now that we’re festival-ready; we can’t wait to welcome revellers to the Heineken Greener Bar where they can experience our great beer (including Heineken 0.0); our passion for sustainability and the stellar line up we have planned for the weekend.”