What is the most sustainable way to travel to Dekmantel Festival from abroad?

Given the environmental impact of flying, we highly suggest taking the train. As an example: a train trip from Berlin to Amsterdam saves about 100kg CO₂ – enough to charge your phone 12,000 times.

If flying is the most realistic option for you, then compensating the large emissions is worth doing! We’ve been compensating all artists’ and crew flights since 2019 using Atmosfair and we hope that you’re interested in joining us, if you are in the position to do so. The easiest way is to use the compensation options in our ticketshops.

Once in Amsterdam, we suggest biking: a scenic way to discover the city and travel to the festival grounds. Of course, there's also shuttle busses and public transport.

What are we doing to help?
We aim to inspire artists, visitors and partners to consider greener alternatives. Although the emphasis is on reducing the total number of flights, our experience has taught us that flying may still be the most realistic option in some cases. We want to make a difference nonetheless, which is why we started to compensate all artists’ flights in a credible and structural way in 2019. Now, we are expanding this by facilitating the offsetting of flight emissions through our ticketshop – for those who are able to do so financially. Through this, we hope to further reduce the collective impact we have on this planet.

Why compensate emissions via Atmosfair?
Aviation has detrimental effects on climate change: greenhouse gasses are directly released into the atmosphere, and massive amounts of CO₂ are emitted from burning fossil fuels (see also IPCC). CO₂ compensation isn’t a long-term solution, but it's worth doing while we work on wider change. There are many ways to go about compensating emissions – while planting trees certainly contributes to climate protection, there are also reasons that make this approach less suitable for CO₂ compensation (for further reading, we recommend this overview, but there’s scientific sources as well). Furthermore, there's a moral component: the unequal distribution of carbon emissions mirrors the disparity of environmental harm caused by a small fraction of the population of the world at large. Every initiative to mitigate climate change helps, but for now, this is why we are more inclined to endorse the wider approach of Atmosfair (but we certainly encourage supporting organizations such as Client Earth as well).

What does Atmosfair do?

Atmosfair is a non-profit organization that invests in CO₂ compensation by promoting, developing and financing several renewable energy projects in more than 15 countries worldwide, a majority of which is covered by the CDM Gold Standard. Donations are used to start and extend these projects in the global south, such as rural electrification with solar power and mini-grids in Madagascar, small biogas plants for farmers in Nepal or efficient cookstoves in Rwanda. On the technical side, we are convinced that Atmosfair is highly credible in their offsetting calculations, as they provide the highest emission factors compared to other tools. This is because Atmosfair takes a relatively higher radiative forcing factor (RF=3) into account, while most calculators and reports have a factor of about 2. Such a factor must be considered because aviation increases radiative forcing in the atmosphere. This has a greater impact on climate change than just CO₂ emissions from the ground (see also ICAO).

What can you do to help?

We hope that you're interested in joining us in our mission to give back to nature and future generations, if you are in a position to do so! We have integrated options for offsetting CO₂-emissions from the most frequent departure locations in our ticket shop this year. Is your place of departure not listed here? We recommend heading over to Atmosfair and using their easy compensation tool directly!