Tortuga Music Festival: Behind-the-Scenes at the Most Sustainable Large-Scale Music Festival in the World

I’ve started measuring my life in Tortugas, and no, I don’t actually mean turtles…

But by how many times I’ve worked at the popular music festival down here in South Florida called Tortuga Music Festival. 

Held on Fort Lauderdale Beach for now 13 years, Tortuga Music Festival may look like your average multi-day, large-scale binge drinking event with music, but this one is so much more than that. 

Tortuga Music Festival was created and founded by Rock The Ocean, an ocean conservation nonprofit with the vision of bringing ocean conservation awareness to the public by combining it with a music festival. 

They do an incredible job of centering around ocean conservation, and the heart of the festival, between two stages, is called Conservation Village. At Conservation Village, you’ll find around 20-30 local ocean conservation organizations spanning five core issues: Sea Turtles, Coral Reefs, Sharks, Marine Habitats, and Marine Mammals. 

A portion of proceeds from the festival as well as 100% of all Rock The Ocean merchandise sold (at any time, even outside of Tortuga) goes to these ocean conservation organizations via grants. 

I’m lucky enough to work with one of the organizations that is a longtime recipient of this funding, Friends of Our Florida Reefs (FOFR). 

In addition, for the past four years, I’ve been working at Tortuga Music Festival behind-the-scenes at the Renüable tent sorting compost for the event.

You might be thinking, sorting compost? Don’t you mean trash? YUP!

Renüable - Composting at Tortuga Music Festival

“We don’t like to call it waste, we call it “opportunity”.” - Xavier DeRoos, Founder of Renüable.

What would aid in making any festival sustainable? 

Ensuring composting was available just as much as recycling or a trashcan would be. 

Rock The Ocean doesn’t leave it to chance that fans will put their trash into the right bins. 

That’s why they partner up with local composting business, Renüable, to assemble a “Green Team” that sorts through the trash all weekend long. 

This means all the festival’s trash, including from the employees working the event, is sent to Renüable’s Green Team to be hand sorted. 

I have worked on Renüable’s Tortuga Green Team for the past four years, working the entire three (now up to five plus) days, all day long. 

About a 15-hour shift, standing in your sorting station as bags upon bags of trash are brought to us for sorting. 

It might sound a little crazy to sort trash, and the first year, I definitely thought so too, but I signed up for only a shift each day back then, and I quickly found it to be so fun and impactful.

On top of sorting, you’re doing it alongside super interesting people who have also decided to spend their weekend sorting trash, which in itself makes for a unique variety of personalities who join us. 

I’ve met friends through the Tortuga composting sorting, I’ve made connections, and I’ve learned so many people’s life stories, which I really love. 

Not to mention, you have this physical pile you all are conquering together, so camaraderie is quickly built amongst the people working the shift. 

To get back to the compost sorting, we basically have a four-bin system where we are sorting into compost, recycling, film plastics, and landfill. 

The goal is to get as much into the compost (without contamination) first, then recycling, film plastic recycling, and lastly throw as little into the landfill as we can without compromising the other streams. 

Almost everything at Tortuga Music Festival, food and beverage-wise, is compostable.

Renüable takes meat, dairy, and bones because they have the commercial facility to be able to adequately compost these types of organics (unlike home composting systems). 

Additionally, all the service-ware, everything the food is served on or in, is certified BPI compostable from World Centric or in 2026, Phade, or Better for All cups. 

Forks, spoons, napkins, all utensils, straws, food boats, plates, bowls… you name it, it’s compostable. 

The Better for All PHA cups breakdown in the commercial composting system within 10 weeks. 

There’s also an option to opt for the Pirani double-insulated tumblers, which makes a great souvenir cup.

We pick out the recycling that is mostly aluminum cans, which are infinitely recyclable. 

There’s also glass, a lot of cardboard, and the tetrapack cartons were taken for recycling in 2026 by the City of Fort Lauderdale as well. 

Film plastics are the thin plastics that are typically not curbside recyclable like ice bags, saran wrap, trash bags, food bags. Although it typically can’t be recycled in a traditional recycling facility, Geared4Green takes them and recycles them into more plastic bags for trash next year and T-shirts. 

Not mentioned earlier, but Rock The Ocean also managed to find speciality recycling for used zip ties (typically not recyclable) and used disposable gloves (also not typically recyclable), both of which are plentiful through the festival. 

Rock The Ocean does primarily try to use reusable zip ties, which I love!

Almost everything from the festival is either recycled or upcycled so that includes vinyl signs and banners, wood, pallets, etc. 

We also keep aside e-waste, batteries, shoes, unique finds, anything that still has life in it. 

Lastly, the landfill which contains those odds and ends that didn’t fit ALL the different (and so many more I missed, I’m sure) waste management streams Rock The Ocean and their sustainability coordinator, Annie Botch, found to divert the festival’s waste. 

In 2025, Renüable’s Tortuga Green Team was able to compost over 24,000 pounds.

In 2026, by adding more days of sorting, they were able to complete all of the bags for the festival totaling to over 40,000 pounds composted. 

Truly mindblowing! 

Now think about how many music festivals taking place all around the United States (all around the world) that are not composting (or recycling or even banning single-use plastics).

So much valuable organic material is ending up in the landfill/incinerator causing us major issues. 

I’m so proud to be a small part of such a well-organized, intentional music festival that is walking the walk. 

Now I know this section was long, but this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the lengths Rock The Ocean goes to ensure their diverting 77% (2025) plus of their overall waste and carbon emissions. 

I didn’t even touch on their use of solar batteries to generate power, food rescue efforts, how there’s a team of people planting sea oats on-site during the festival, the cleanups before and after the event in Fort Lauderdale, the ocean-friendly vendors not being allowed to bring in single-use plastic, and so many more things. 

You can actually learn all about that here at this video… and I’ll get into that next!

If you’re not following Rock The Ocean, buying their merch as gifts, or going to Tortuga Music Festival, you should be! 

Conscious Content Clips - Documenting Tortuga Music Festival 

Not only is there composting, electric generators, recycling for every bit and bob… there’s also a sustainable team to capture it all, Conscious Content Clips. 

For the last two years, we have had the pleasure of working with Rock The Ocean and shooting Tortuga Music Festival. 

Cassidy Doster, our professional photographer and videographer, has provided the bulk of Rock The Ocean’s Tortuga media. 

Using that media, we have worked with Rock The Ocean to create both short-form and long-form videos detailing all the sustainability initiatives Rock The Ocean implements for Tortuga Music Festival. 

Each year, they try to make the festival more sustainable than the last. 

Reducing more. Rethinking more. Restoring more. Diverting more. 

I personally wrote all the scripts and the associated short-form captions for the videos. 

Watch the short-form videos here: Reduce. Rethink. Restore.

We also made another compost donation video, showing the cycle of organic material composted from Tortuga processed into finished compost that was then used to grow the sea oats that were planted this year at Tortuga Music Festival 2026. 

The long-form was a DOOZY of a script because there are over 800 initiatives from Tortuga Music Festival 2025 and we didn’t want a ten-minute long video. 

We were able to cut it down to under 6 minutes after much revision. 

Really just shows how much effort they put into being sustainable, and I wanted to make sure everyone was aware because it’s truly such a different way of approaching events. 

Watch the long-form video on Rock The Ocean’s Sustainability Initiatives for Tortuga Music Festival, produced by Conscious Content Clips. 

At CCC, we’re incredibly proud to have the opportunity to work with Rock The Ocean!

Showing Us What’s Possible 

Events like Tortuga Music Festival and organizers like Rock The Ocean show us one thing for certain: it’s possible to have sustainable large-scale events. 

It’s not without a ton of planning or organization, but I think it’s safe to say Rock The Ocean *knows* it’s worth it. 

As someone who gets to be involved in a small way, *I* think it’s worth it. 

Watch the long-form video on Rock The Ocean’s Sustainability Initiatives for Tortuga Music Festival, produced by Conscious Content Clips.