Our Kaupapa
A Mindful Tribe of Party Animals.
Splorers are people who know how to have a damn good time while respecting the environment and our Splore family. Thanks to you, we create a party like no other: based on manaakitanga, respect, kindness, doing good, feeling great and having a whole lot of fun. When we all come together, Splorers create magic.
Sustainability is at the heart.
We practice what we preach, and work with Tāpapakanga’s iwi, Ngāti Paoa and Ngāti Whanaunga, to honour this beautiful land.
Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, from saying ‘no’ to single–use plastics to keeping our campsites clean and sorted with the help of our Camp Kaitiaki and Zero Waste volunteers.
Love this Place
The vibe, culture, and protecting the environment.
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We are grateful to the iwi who have mana whenua over this site, Ngāti Paoa and Ngāti Whanaunga, and to their tūpuna. They give us their blessing to be here. Please: take pride in being part of the Splore community and be kaitiaki (caregivers) of this place.
Honour the Whenua
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Cultural appropriation happens when a culturally important garment or sacred symbol is worn as a party costume or fashion trend and is stripped of its significance and context. This is especially hurtful when items from a minority culture are worn by someone from a colonial culture. We ask Splorers to be mindful of their costume choices, and to be understanding when people ask for sensitivity around garments that hold a place of honour in their cultural heritage (think native American Indian headdresses).
There’s a fine line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation: while some people might call it politically correct, we just call it showing respect and love for your fellow humans!
Cultural Appreciation
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From choosing to eat a vegetarian meal, to riding the bus or car pooling to Splore, we can all take action to reduce Splore’s emissions. Our food vendors will accept your reusable coffee cups and plates - so pack a set & take a load off Papatūānuku.
Towards Carbon Neutral
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Step up your costume game with Splore’s sustainable styling tips and tricks.
Bring something to swap at Aotearoa’s Greatest Costume Swap and participate in free up-cycling & bejazzling workshops, info & styling sessions at Costume Revolution brought to you by Fashion Revolution NZ.
Costume Revolution
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Working alongside Camp HQ and the Zero Waste team, our Camp Kaitiaki will soon be your new best pals.
From handing out bags for your campsite recycling and composting, to lending a hand pitching your tent, our Camp Kaitiaki are friendly faces with many a trick in their fanny packs.
Camp Kaitiaki
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This mythical away is usually a landfill. Throwing something away simply means you’ve passed on responsibility to someone else.
Help us to change this reality. Splore is set up to make it easy for you to separate your waste in bin stations all over the site, so that we can send Zero Waste to landfill.
Zero Waste
Leave no trace
We’re proud to have honest, in–depth, creative waste minimisation strategies, and we keep building on them year after year.
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We make it super easy for you: by providing Compost, Recycling and waste-to-fill bins all over the festival site, and three ‘Leave No Trace’ mega sorting hubs in the campsites. Please use them, and use them well. Ask our Zero Waste volunteers if you need a hand sorting your trash.
Keep your campsite looking cute: pre-sort your waste into three bags at your campsite and drop them at a bin station before you head out to party. Make friends and influence people with your good-looking campsite, avoid ending up with an unmanageable pile of stuff when the party’s over.
If you see something on the ground, take one for the team! Pick it up and help it find its way into the right bin.
Make Splore cute again
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Sound good? Yeah but nah. The sneaky problem is that all of these compostable things are also single-use, disposable, non-recyclable, contain freaky chemicals and are tricky to compost properly.
The solution involves you: help Splore’s compostable packaging get to ‘compost nirvana:’ put all of your food dishes, cutlery and cups into the green Compost bins at Splore, and we’ll take care of the rest.*
The real deal breaker for compostable packaging is PLA (a.k.a plant-based / #7 plastic). Sure, the #7 plastic polymers are made from plants instead of fossil fuels, but we have overlooked the toxic chemicals and resins used to make compostable plastic look, feel and perform like ‘real’ plastic. We don’t want PLA in our mouths, or yours.
Recent studies from the University of Canterbury shows that when plant-based plastic is commercially composted and that compost is used in a garden, we’re adding micro- and nano-plastics and long-lasting chemicals like PFAS into the soil (and therefore our food system, yikes).
We know that Splore exists inside a magical bubble, and that most people in Aotearoa don’t have access to a commercial composting facility. So the compostable or biodegradable packaging we feel good for using in our everyday lives most likely still ends up in landfill. It’s confusing at best and wasteful at worst; and it distracts us from the real goal: reuse! and eliminate all single–use, disposable products (even if they are made from plant-based plastics).
The best solution: reduce the amount of compostable packaging we use. Bring your own reusable dishes and cutlery to Splore, and remember to pack them every time you grab takeaways or go out for street food.
*Compostable serveware containing PLA #7 must be commercially composted (heated above 60°C at 90% humidity for up to two weeks) for it to break down properly. Your average home compost or worm farm ain’t gonna cut it, so we separate all of Splore’s compostable waste and take it to Envirofert (a commercial composting facility in Tuakau).
The compostable packaging conundrum
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Since we introduced reusable, washable cups at Splore in 2014, Splorers have prevented more than 600,000 single use plastic drink cups from being sent to landfill.
Yes, they’re washable and reusable, but they are made of based fossil fuel based plastic (#5 PP Polypropylene) which is not easily recycled in NZ. We know it’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do for now.
We ask you to bring back your favourite to Splore and show how we party now: no more new or virgin plastic cups will be produced for Splore. If yours came from Splore, WOMAD or Northern Bass, bring ‘it! We don’t discriminate on appearances.
As always you’ll be able to swap your used one for a clean one on site, and receive a $1 refund when you return it to the Reusable Cup Station at the end of the festival.
Reusable cups
Pack Smart
Sustainability starts at home. What you put in your bag makes a big difference.
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Smart recycling starts with you, every time you get your wallet out. Avoid buying things wrapped in plastic and excess packaging, or take it one step further and peel off all the unnecessary bits and leave them at the store. This tiny, simple action makes a powerful statement about the world you want to live in.
Pro-tip: decant your festival essentials into reusable containers, take those extra batteries out of their packet, etcetera. Less stuff to carry, less stuff to throw in the bin = double win.
Precycle before you Recycle
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Having a fully–kitted–out campsite can be fun, but will that flimsy gazebo end its short and unhappy life in a heap at the end of Splore?
If you don’t have what you need, try borrowing from a friend or buying quality second hand. If you buy new gear, it’s actually cheaper in the long run to buy something high quality that will go the distance. And less is more! All you need to have a great Splore is a sturdy place to sleep and a good attitude. We provide the rest!
Buy well, by once! (or borrow)
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Our mates at BodyFX will be stocking compostable bio–glitter at Splore which isn’t as bad for the environment for anyone who just can’t kick the glitter habit.
Glow sticks and bracelets are single–use plastic tubes filled with toxic chemicals. It’s a lot of nasty waste for just one night of shine. Instead, try adding UV body paint.
Shine like you mean it
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One hour of hydration shouldn’t cost the environment a thousand years of slow–degrading plastic.
We’ll have reusable bottles for sale, but it’s even better if you bring your own. Pop it in your backpack, strap it to your belt, turn it into a necklace and write your phone number on your bottle to help keep it out of Lost and Found.
There’s free fresh drinking water available all over the site, so whatever you do, make sure you BYOB.
Bring Your Own Bottle
Talking Trash
Get the dirty on our systems, strategies and statistics.
We run Splore on a Zero Waste kaupapa: this means we are trying to send zero waste to landfill. We can all help to do this by reducing what we bring to the festival site, choosing reusables instead of disposables, and recovering organic and recyclable materials.
In 2023, we diverted 59% of our stuff from landfill, which is great, but it also means we sent 7680 kgs of stuff to landfill (that’s almost two tonnes more than 2021). While we are punching above our weight (the UK festival average diversion rate is 32%) we can do better! In 2024 we want to get that diversion rate closer to 80%.
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Splore’s zero waste crew & volunteers work alongside our waste contractor Clean Event to separate and sort residual materials onsite, so that we can minimise the waste we send to landfill. We separate our onsite materials into: recyclables (cans, plastic, glass [from the bars, remember Splore has a ban on bringing glass], cardboard, paper, metal, wood), compostable resources (food, and the compostable cutlery and serveware our vendors use), e-waste, soft plastics, and waste to landfill.
Where possible, we try to give our resources a second chance, so they can continue to have a useful life (for example, by reusing site signage and decorations).
We can't manage what we don't measure. It’s a big, dirty job but every year we sort, weigh and audit all of the resource streams on site. In 2023, Splorers produced a 18540 kg of ‘stuff’. We are stoked to have composted or recycled 59% (10860 kg). But this also means we sent a total of 7680 kg of waste to landfill. Crunching those numbers, every Splorer is responsible for creating 1.9 kg of waste. Splore has set up the systems to keep stuff out of landfill - now we just need everyone to get onboard the zero-waste waka.
From our 10 composting toilets at Splore 2023, we diverted 300 kg of fertiliser to a native plant nursery, and 1200 L of urea as agricultural fertiliser. Plus we saved over 1500 L of fresh drinking water from being wasted through toilet flushing and processing systems.