What Makes a
Festival Conscious?
A lot of conscious festivals are not conscious at all. Just pretending.
Thaan, at Gaia Beats 2026
We'd agree. The word ends up on a lot of posters.
So rather than tell you Gaia Beats is a conscious festival, here's what we actually do, where the money goes, and the parts we haven't sorted out yet.
You can decide for yourself.
What You’ll Actually See
The first thing most people notice is the plates. There aren't any disposable ones. Around 400 plates, bowls and sets of cutlery are borrowed from temples down the road, with a donation in return. You eat, you wash your own, you hand it back.
Our vendors agree not to sell single-use plastic, and in 2026 nine out of ten of them stuck to it (we're chasing up on the 1/10). Bring a cup you like, or pick up a metal one on site, and fill it for free at any of the seven water points.
Everything that's left over goes to a hub we call Big Green. About thirty volunteers sort it into nine separate streams there, from half past eight in the morning until nine at night. Soft plastic gets packed into bottles and becomes building bricks. Food waste goes to a farm 6.9 km down the road and comes back as compost. And in 2026 there was no hazardous waste at all.
None of it is glamorous. Mostly it's a lot of people doing a bit more work than they strictly have to.
It Isn’t Only About Bins
Looking after the land is half of it. The other half is how people treat each other.
Gaia Futures and Gaia Talks are where the conversations happen: talks, circles, people working out what they'd change once they're home.
Children twelve and under come free.
If the full ticket price is out of reach, there's a ticket support application, and we'd honestly rather you used it than stayed away.
In 2026, local restaurants got their vendor space for free.
Conscious of the environment, of each other, of the impacts we make.
DJ, at Gaia Beats 2026
We ask everyone to arrive with five things in mind:
01
People and planet first.
02
Grow beyond the weekend.
03
Be open, not perfect.
04
Explore, play, create.
05
Care for the space as if it belongs to someone you respect.
Where the
Money Goes
Gaia Beats runs as a not-for-profit social enterprise. Every year, 1% of total revenue goes to social and environmental projects in Northern Thailand. That's revenue, not profit, so it still goes out in a year we don't make any, which in 2026 we didn't.
In 2025, before Gaia Beats was a three-day festival, a one-day pop-up gave away half of what it cleared. The next gift goes to a Chiang Mai project working with children and young people, and we'll name it as soon as it's signed. The full story, with the numbers, is on How Gaia Beats gives back.
What We Haven’t Fixed Yet
We aim for at least half our artists to be Thai, and for a fully Thai management team in time. We're not there on either yet.
We'll keep this page honest as things change, and add the 2027 numbers after the festival. Come and see it for yourself, and tell us where we're falling short.