DonauCycle – Celebrate Circular Economy and Experience Sustainability

The Danube Island Festival in Vienna is one of the largest open-air music festivals in Europe and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Since it was founded in 1984, it has combined musical diversity, social integration and community togetherness to create one of Austria's cultural highlights. More recently, the organizers have firmly anchored sustainability and the circular economy in the festival and use the event as a platform to bring innovative topics such as the bioeconomy and circular economy closer to a broad audience. The project “DonauCycle - Celebrating cycles and experiencing sustainability” aims to communicate this content in a playful and low-threshold way. The initiative sees itself as the starting point for an interactive “cycle island” that presents complex scientific and technical content such as biology, chemistry, process engineering and climate protection in an understandable and entertaining way. Interactive activities are divided into three categories: Information events, “do it yourself” stations and an exhibition area for start-ups from the bioeconomy and circular economy sectors. These are given a stage to present technologies and solutions and inspire visitors with innovative approaches to resource use. The project is based on the “cradle to cradle” approach and covers the entire value chain from raw material extraction to recycling. Visitors can take part in guided tours in which material flows and the interaction of individual stations are explained. The aim is to raise awareness among a wide audience, promote dialog between science, business and society and present concrete solutions for sustainable cycles - all within the framework of a rousing public festival. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)