![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Ultra-.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tUltra’s sustainability program has set a goal to keep the Biscayne Water flowing through Bayfront Park unaffected for the past 6 years. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tUltra’s sustainability program has set a goal to keep the Biscayne Water flowing through Bayfront Park unaffected for the past 6 years. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Ultra photo<\/p>\n
The post-festival<\/a> grounds fall just a few steps below a landfill. Water bottles lie on the floor, contorted, like fumigated bugs. Flat-as-pancake-stomped cans are discarded on the ground. Cigarette butts lay in waste, and there is a formidable thickness of grime and sweat all over. Adding insult to injury, when debris is scattered so close to an aquatic ecosystem, for example, Bayfront Park<\/a>, it can seem as if the litter is mocking the pristine waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultra Music Festival<\/a> and its \u201cMission: Home<\/a>\u201d sustainability program have set a goal to keep the Biscayne Water flowing through Bayfront Park unaffected for the past 6 years and are undoubtedly leading the way for eco-friendly music festivals in North America.<\/p>\n It\u2019s quixotic to think that the grounds are cleaned up each night with some magical vacuum cleaner: It\u2019s through the efforts of the festival, especially its Sustainability Director, Vivian Belzaguy Hunter, and her six-person team, who manage Bayfront Park before, during, and after the festival, and make each day seem like new.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, there is trash after every music festival,\u201d Belzaguy tells New Times, \u201cbut you can tell the difference with a festival that really went out of its way and employed a waste management partner that actually cares to keep it under control.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Belzaguy\u2019s duties run far past putting up passive \u201cRecycle Here\u201d bins or telling attendees to be \u201cmindful\u201d when discarding their cups and plates. Mission: Home adopts a holistic approach that extends throughout North Miami, having educated 8.2 million individuals, diverting nearly 400,000 pounds of waste, and donating over 84,000 pounds of resources back to the community.<\/p>\n Mission: Home began in 2019 when Ultra moved to Virginia Key. That year became memorialized with the infamous walk across the Rickenbacker<\/a> \u2014 but to Belzaguy, who first worked with Ultra that same year, the Virginia Key edition was an environmental success. Virginia Key and community organizations enforce strict rules to preserve the lush land and coast while keeping nearby residents unbothered. Any festival aiming to host at Virginia Key must work assiduously to safeguard the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the deal with moving to Virginia Key was having a real plan with real initiatives,\u201d\u00a0 explains Belzaguy. \u201cThere were about thirteen initiatives agreed on with community organizations and Ultra. We delivered more than we were asked, with over twenty initiatives. Two shining moments from that year were that some community organizations issued a secret report card during the festival, and we got an \u2018A.\u2019 We also received a letter from the park that we did an incredible job of understanding how to mitigate our impact and clean up afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n Belzaguy, a Miami native, worked in event programming for over two decades, including events and festivals at Virginia Key. During her career, she became more environmentally conscious \u2014 striving to make common sense fixes like recycling and composting to lessen her footprint. She pivoted to specialize in promoting environmental initiatives at festivals after observing the lack of environmental deference at big-scale events.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultra Returns to Bayfront Park With 61 Green Initiatives<\/p>\n When Ultra moved back to its home at Bayfront Park in 2022, Belzaguy noted that the City didn\u2019t impose nearly as many austere environmental rules. \u201cIt\u2019s an urban park, but it\u2019s still right against the bay,\u201d she points out. \u201cIt\u2019s a location that still can have an environmental impact.\u201d The festival kept Mission: Home indefinitely, now with sixty-one environmental initiatives. \u201cWe put the initiatives into five objectives: pollution presentation, nature preservation, waste reduction, climate actions, and community engagement. We have fully gotten behind it, and compete on a global scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, Mission: Home has garnered awards, including the first-place SUNsational Award in the Sustainability Program category at the\u00a0Florida Festivals and Events Association<\/a>; a notable mention in the music business publication\u00a0IQ Magazine\u2019s\u00a02025 Green Guardians<\/a>, sharing the honor with Coldplay<\/a> and Massive Attack. Ultra recently received A Greener Future<\/a>\u2018s \u201cGreener Festival\u201d certification and became a finalist in the A Greener Future award for community action, making it the only American festival nominated. Stated in A Green Future\u2019s press release, the award intends to \u201ccelebrate the most innovative and greenest events, venues, and organizations from across the globe over the last 12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n Festival-goers can visit Ultra\u2019s Eco Village<\/a> to engage in educational activities during their music breaks, organized by five local environmental and social organizations present on-site, including: Clean Miami Beach, Debris Free Oceans, Love the Everglades Movement, F Fentanyl, and CLEO Institute. Prior to the festival, anyone can volunteer for a clean-up, in collaboration with Clean Vibes, an on-site waste management company for outdoor festivals and events.\u00a0<\/p>\n Belzaguy adds that Mission: Home also strengthens Miami\u2019s community through pet adoption drives at Bayfront throughout the year and provides almost 20,000 pounds of food and beverages to the local Miami Rescue Mission and Lotus House year-round. Fans can donate school supplies, uniforms, and other resources for a chance to win a trip to Ultra 2026.<\/p>\n Each year brings a collective groan from Downtown residents opposing Ultra\u2019s three days of noise, lighting, and attendees. Though reasonable, a fair debate also requires weighing the festival\u2019s broader impact on the city beyond a single weekend of high-decibel electronic music. \u201cI hope people can see this program as a way to give back to our local community,\u201d\u00a0 counters Belzaguy, \u201cand I hope we can be given a shot to see the impact we have made.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultra Music Festival 2026. Friday, March 27, through Sunday, March 29, 2026, at Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; ultramusicfestival.com<\/a>. Tickets from $479.15 via ultramusicfestival.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultra’s sustainability program has set a goal to keep the Biscayne Water flowing through Bayfront Park unaffected for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[19943,225,227,226,13605],"class_list":["post-168853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-edm","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-philanthropy-nonprofits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}