On the eve of the opening of the eco-responsible festival We Love Green, which is holding its 12th edition at the Bois de Vincennes from Friday June 2 to Sunday June 4, an overview of the novelties for 2023 with its director, the fascinating Marie Sabot.
Since its first edition in 2010, the eco-responsible festival We Love Green has evolved a lot. In thirteen years, the event has not stopped moving forward, becoming one of the most popular laboratories for testing sustainable solutions in events in the face of the climate emergency. At the same time, We Love Green almost doubled its capacity, going from 12,000 people to some 120,000 expected over three days on June 2, 3 and 4, 2023 at the Bois de Vincennes. The director of the Marie Sabot festival details for us the essential novelties of this 12e editing.
A new Playground scene with skateboard ramps
Regularly, the organizers of We Love Green rethink the layout of the festival, ensuring that no stage is like another in order to vary the experience. This year, “a good third of the site” has been reviewed and a new music and sports scene appears, the Playground scene, where skateboarders, breakers and BMX (the new disciplines of the Olympic Games) will perform, equipped with several skateboard ramps, including a brand new competition one.
“On the music side, it’s a Bloc Party style scene designed with Pedro Winter, founder of the Ed Banger label, who is a big fan of skate“, explains Marie Sabot. “On stage, we will have plenty of young Parisian collectives rather techno like Cinquième Terrasse but also young rappers and old friends of Pedro like Feadz and Uffie.” But it is above all a scene imagined in collaboration with the organizers of the Darwin Climax Festival of Bordeaux “who designed this whole area with their collective of graphic designers“.”Behind the central stage, we have a competition ramp, a vertical, which has just been built and which they lend to us, where international skate champions will perform. The person who developed the program for this space is Edouard Damestoy, double skateboarding world champion, who has just won the gold medal in skateboarding in Japan. “green” (for vertical) at the X Games in Chiba. Since there’s a festival of international skateboarders in Copenhagen a week later, we caught quite a few of them. There are also two intermediate skate ramps where semi-pro skaters will perform, but where amateur festival-goers can also have fun and learn about children, with the Ile-de-France school Cosanostra (you must register and reserve a slot at the Playground space when arriving at the festival). We had a lot of fun doing that scene.”
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A 100% vegetarian catering offer
No more carnivorous hamburgers and other fish & chips: this year, the menu of We Love Green becomes 100% vegetarian, a rarity for a festival of this size in Europe. Especially since the offer is particularly rich, with around fifty street food stands, all carefully selected. The goal ? To further reduce the carbon footprint of the festival, as meat production is responsible for approximately 15% of greenhouse gases worldwide.
“At We Love Green, everyone eats vegetarian this year, even the technicians who set up the festival, even the artists, even the social security, it’s a total thing”, explains Marie Sabot. “But it takes creativity, it has to be good. No question of making chickpea dumplings from morning to night. The switch to 100% vegetarian took a lot of work but it was super interesting. We started by brainstorming with chefs like Bertrand Grébaut from Septime, Claire Vallée and Hugo Roellinger, culinary journalists and ecotables. We wondered how French gastronomy will evolve? What everyone was saying was that we’ve only been eating meat every day since the 1960s in France. Before, we ate mainly vegetables and legumes and Sunday roast chicken was the exception, and had been for millennia. We should go back to that. We then held workshops with the restaurateurs selected to have a range of creative ideas and different proposals. The selection is therefore inventive and very tempting, we will be able to enjoy ourselves far from falafels and fake burgers.”
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Intergenerational rap programming
Last year, we already noted a very clear rise in power of rap at the festival. This year, rap constitutes the bulk of the programming even if rock (Phoenix who could not play last year due to bad weather, Josckstap, Surf Curse) and electro (Skrillex, The Blaze, Honey Dijon, Agar Agar, Nia Archives, Ed Banger etc) are also in the game. The cream of French rap responded, from OrelSan to Lomepal, from Dinos to Gazo, from Disiz to Lorenzo and from PLK to Vacra. But we also notice figures of international rap that are too rare around here like Little Simz, Pusha T, NxWorries (Anderson .Paak + producer Knxwledge), Yung Lean, 070 Shake or Superjazz Club. This promises great intergenerational discoveries.
“I can’t wait to see Little Simz, this English rapper whom I consider to be the new Kendrick Lamar. She’s magnetic and she’s as strong as him on stage“, enthuses Marie Sabot. “Pusha T meanwhile is in exceptional shape, his album released last year was everywhere and he gave an extraordinary show at Coachella. And then Nx Worries released a single in the last few days which is absolute coolness. Gazo was supposed to play last year but he couldn’t and he’s coming back this year, it’s heart warming because he doesn’t play in the same category at all anymore. He closes the Clairière stage on Saturday night and it’s going to be like Migos when they came: boiling hot. OrelSan will give his last concert in Paris of the tour on Friday Civilization, we’re pretty excited to see the energy he’s going to put into the show. What we find interesting is the articulation between the scenes and the bridges that can be created: I hope that Lorenzo fans who are very young will get a slap in the face of Pusha T or Little Simz, whether they will discover a more complicated, more poetic rap. And conversely that older Pusha T fans will discover Gazo on stage and realize that the guy has an impressive charisma.”
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Prepare for bad weather and extreme heat
Last year, the Saturday concerts had to be canceled and the site evacuated at the very beginning of the evening due to the violent storms and the downpours which had fallen on the Ile-de-France. This is one of the imponderables faced by all outdoor events. However, We Love Green has once again thought about improving the comfort of festival-goers.
“Since you can’t cover part of the wood for shelter, but we thought about a lot of little things in different places of the festival. For example, this year we covered the LalaLand stage with a large transparent marquee lit up with small laser lights“, explains Marie Sabot. “The Dutch designer who designed it wanted to question the design of large industrial greenhouses and suddenly, above the DJ’s we will have the impression of being in a large greenhouse of CBD, it will be quite funny. The stage under the marquee of the Canopy was set up differently and covered more. We also covered the spaces on the sides of the food court, both for the rain and for the sun – we can dine in the shade. For the moment, great weather is expected all weekend with 26 degrees during the day. But in case of hot weather we even ordered misters. And we also convinced the Prefecture to authorize small umbrellas, such as water bottles and lunch boxes..”
Going the extra mile to reduce waste and carbon footprint
Mocked in its infancy, the festival’s ecological commitment has since become an example to follow. Above all, We Love Green is a laboratory that tests new ideas each year to reduce its environmental impact, hailed over time by a host of awards – it has notably obtained four times the highest distinction from the English NGO Greener festival
“This year have done a great experiment on reusable tableware. We have found a washing center and the dishes for part of the festival will therefore be cleaned every day, which will save several tons of waste, in addition to the compostable dishes. I think we are the first festival to test it“, announces Marie Sabot. “Reducing waste is still our obsession with the carbon footprint. Last year we succeeded in reducing the carbon footprint to 16 kg per festival-goer. By way of comparison, the Think Tank The Shift Project assesses the carbon footprint at 50 kg per festival-goer in major festivals with 50,000 people. Already, switching to 100% vegetarian mode could reduce the carbon emissions of the food court by 70%. We will have even more precise figures this time because we asked all our stakeholders this year to provide us with answers in view of the carbon footprint.” In conclusion, Marie Sabot assures us: “We Love Green will not grow. We do not want it. There, we are at the maximum. The gigantism of Solidays, Rock en Seine or Lollapalooza is not for us. Neither in the artists we are targeting, nor in the space. We want to remain an adventurous festival.“
We Love Green, from June 2 to 4, 2023 at the Bois de Vincennes, complete program here with a general overview below