Glastonbury Festival’s world-renowned Arcadia spider stage is set to run entirely off renewable energy at this year’s event.
It marks a first for the collective, which hosts stages at festivals around the world including Nevada’s Burning Man and Bangkok’s Gravity Thailand.
Announcing the news alongside the stage’s full line-up in May, Arcadia explained: “The Spider’s built on creative recycling and now she’s got transformation running through her veins.”
“This year, the entire Arcadia field runs on recycled energy – waste cooking oil turned to high-grade biofuel,” they added.
The project has spent years in the works, according to DJ Mag, and will be unveiled for the first time at this year’s event from June 21 – 26. The spider will host acts including Elkka, Skepta, Daphni, and The Chemical Brothers in 2023.
It comes some eight years after Arcadia first announced that the spider stage would run on the ‘world’s first biofuel-powered flame system’ using cooking oil from local fish & chip shops.
Arcadia’s co-founder, Bertie Cole, told DJ Mag: “With the current infrastructure that festivals run on it was clear one of the more efficient ways it could be done is by using a waste fuel to power all those bits of machinery.
“But until quite recently, a lot of the biofuels that were available didn’t really have the provenance of components, like some of them had palm oils, etc., that [we] wouldn’t want to encourage the use of, whereas it’s got to the point now where we can proudly put our name to it.”
Arcadia prizes itself on sustainability – each of the collective’s hand-built stages uses recycled parts and are built with travel in mind in order to reduce their carbon footprint.
“It has been rewarding to work in Asian countries and to see The Spider continue to inspire young people to consider waste differently,” reads Arcadia’s website.
Meanwhile, Arcadia is also in the process of setting up a “semi-permanent structure” at Glastonbury with over 150 tonnes of recycled machinery. “We hope [The Spider] will not move off the farm for many years to come,” they explained.
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