• For its 20th edition, the Nuits Secrètes festival, which takes place from Friday to Sunday, in Aulnoye-Aymeries, in the North, is putting the package on eco-responsibility.

  • Objective: to reduce the carbon footprint of the event.

  • The big innovation this year is to bet on more vegetarian dishes for the catering of festival-goers.

On the stage, Orelsan, Damso, PNL, Vitalic, Juliette Armanet will follow one another… Behind the scenes, the most anticipated event will be the reduction of the carbon footprint.

For its 20th edition, the Nuits Secrètes festival, which takes place from Friday to Sunday, in Aulnoye-Aymeries, in the North, is putting the package on eco-responsibility.

Objective: to reduce the carbon footprint of the event.

Because when you welcome nearly 60,000 festival-goers in three days, you have to grind your neurons to integrate into an ecological and united approach.

In the Secret Nights team, it is Marion Toche who sticks to it behind her function as coordinator of social responsibility for organizations (RSO).

Fewer menus with meat

“Social responsibility is to put in place a series of environmental actions, in relation to respect for others, for employees as well as for festival-goers, she explains to

20 Minutes

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Between each festival, we imagine a musical event that is as ethical as possible on these social issues.

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Concretely, this translates, for example, for several years by the establishment of night trains to bring festival-goers back safely to Lille or Saint-Quentin.

"Thanks to a partnership with the region, a round trip costs 2 euros," she says.

You should know that transport, especially for festival-goers, represents almost three quarters of the greenhouse gases emitted by this type of event and, more generally, culture is the third cause of mobility for the French.

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Second very polluting item: food.

Les Nuits Secrètes was one of the first festivals in the region to work almost exclusively with local products and with 100% compostable tableware.

This year, the organizers are taking a step forward by limiting the offer of dishes with meat to offer more vegetarian menus.

Precursor of tomorrow's trends?

Anti-bullying app

Another novelty is the on-site presence of Catherinettes, a Nantes association that fights against sexist and sexual violence in festive environments.

“Their teams will carry out patrols with recognizable purple chasubles to discuss with the festival-goers”, says Marion Toche.

It is also this association that will intervene in the event of a problem identified via the Safer app.

Created last year to fight against harassment and sexual violence in the festive environment, it allows problem situations to be reported with a single click.

In 2019, a young woman filed a rape complaint after the festival.

“The complaint had been closed without further action, underlines Marion Toche.

But this story challenged us about safety within a festival.

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Carbon footprint, next year

Finally, the latest innovation, the big stage, usually installed in the heart of the city, moves a few cables across a meadow of 10 hectares (20 football pitches).

“This change of site means that we are going back to the unknown in all our processes,” she explains.

This is why we are giving ourselves another year to officially carry out the carbon footprint of the event.

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All of these choices have a cost.

“Especially in terms of prep time,” she notes.

We hope that the Ministry of Culture will finally put in place aid conditional on an Environmental Charter.

Because deploying this kind of eco-responsible measures is mandatory today if we want music festivals to continue to exist tomorrow.

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Culture

Secret Nights: Orelsan, PNL and Damso headliners for the festival's 20th anniversary

Culture

We took three readers with us to the Nuits Secrètes festival

  • Culture

  • Festival

  • Carbon

  • Meat

  • Sex

  • Sexism

  • Lille

  • Hauts-de-France