Deep Tropics: The Festival of the Future Is Happening Now

Dancing Into a Waste-Free Future

With the Nashville Capitol glowing in the sunset and the skyline painted pink, blue, and gold, thousands of people gathered in Bicentennial Mall for Deep Tropics. As Disco Lines wrapped up his set and the crowd began drifting toward the next stage, something remarkable stood out. Instead of the usual trail of bottles and trash left behind, the park looked untouched.

The grass was clear, the pathways open, and the Meru Stage amphitheater felt the same as when we had first walked in. Not once during the two-day festival was a trash can necessary

That is not something you see at music festivals. It also did not happen by accident.

From Classrooms to Culture

Deep Tropics began with two brothers, Joel and Blake Atchison, who graduated with sustainability degrees back in 2006, “a degree no one understood,” as Joel put it. They wanted to create a space that didn’t just talk about sustainability in classrooms or textbooks but lived it out in real time.

“We want to party in a way that is not only sustainable for the planet, but sustainable for ourselves and our community,” Joel said. “I like to imagine someone coming to Deep Tropics and experiencing what an event is like without a trash can or learning to reuse a cup throughout the festival. Little things like that can rub off into people’s daily lives.”

That vision became the backbone of the event. Reilly Strong, the festival’s first sustainability director, even built her own major when her school didn’t offer one.

She told me, “It really broke my heart to go to festivals and see such disregard for the planet, so I took it on as a challenge. Festivals can actually benefit the planet and communities while still being fun.”

This same spirit grows every day with the students I work with. They might not be planning music festivals, but they are athletes, artists, and musicians striving to bring their values into the spaces they already are or want to be. They want to meet people where they are and move beyond politics, academic jargon, and the usual silos to create spaces that actually feel fun.

Sustainability as Celebration

At Deep Tropics, sustainability never felt like a lecture. Food vendors served everything from Mediterranean spice bowls and lentil empanadas to açai and plant-based burgers, showing that climate action can taste amazing. Compost bins were set up across the park with clear, friendly signs, and there was even a booth where people could recycle or clean a lost pair of earbuds.

Lineups were printed on seed packets instead of plastic so you could take them home and plant them. Earth Guardians, a community-based group, encouraged composting in ways that felt playful and inviting. The whole festival carried this spirit. It was never about rules or guilt. It felt lighthearted, celebratory, and joyful.

The Power of Imagination

This is what schools and the mainstream media often miss. We spend so much time drilling down on the problems, fears, talking about rising temperatures, and melting ice. What gets lost is imagination, and a clear way to share and build that with a collective container. Deep Tropics offered that missing piece by showing people not only what sustainability looks like, but how it feels when experienced together.

For me, it was a living case study. A festival where music and art made sustainability easy, where food became its own form of climate action, and where community, not guilt, held everything together.

“Our power is coming together,” Reilly said. “Festivals are a microcosm of society, and if we can do it right here, we can expand it.”

Beyond the Festival

Reily’s words have stayed with me. If it can be done here, with thousands of people at a music festival in Nashville, then why not in our schools, our towns, our workplaces? We have to build tangible models that people can fully feel, taste, and live. It creates a ripple effect when you leave. Deep Tropics showed that the future of climate action isn’t only about sacrifice or limits. It can be delicious, FUN, and deeply human.