The Story
OrganizerEchoes of Earth was founded in 2016 in Bengaluru by Roshan Netalkar, founder of the events and entertainment agency Swordfish Events & Entertainment, initially in partnership with the Bengaluru pub brand Watson's. Conceived from the outset around sustainability rather than treating it as an add-on, the festival was built to explore, each year, a different conservation theme through music, art and design: its early editions covered subjects including the ecological role of insects (2017), marine conservation coinciding with India hosting World Environment Day (2018), and endangered species in partnership with National Geographic Wild (2019 and 2022). The festival's stages and art installations are built largely from recycled and upcycled materials, bamboo, scrap metal, salvaged wood and increasingly crowd-sourced e-waste, with organisers reporting that roughly 90% of festival production materials are repurposed. Beyond the main Bengaluru event, Echoes of Earth runs The Greener Side, a year-round programme of workshops, nature walks and community partnerships, and has extended smaller-format events to Goa, Mumbai and Delhi. The 8th edition ran 13-14 December 2025 at the Embassy International Riding School, Bengaluru, under the theme 'The Sixth Sense', in partnership with WWF-India and Roundglass Sustain.
Echoes of Earth's significance lies in its status as India's most consistently recognised sustainability-focused music festival, explicitly designed to demonstrate that large-scale live entertainment need not generate the waste and carbon footprint typically associated with the format. Recognised by A Greener Future (AGF) as Asia's most environmentally progressive music festival and named Circular Festival of the Year 2025, it has become a genuine reference point within India's events industry for sustainable production practices, including solar-powered stages, a strict no-single-use-plastic policy, and complete resource traceability. Its employment model is also notable: organisers report more than 1,200 frontline workers employed annually, 66% of them women, with documented income gains, giving the festival a livelihoods dimension beyond its environmental and music programming.
Echoes of Earth is confirmed very much active and continuing to scale its impact, its 8th edition ran in December 2025 with an international lineup and formal conservation-education partnerships with WWF-India and Roundglass Sustain, alongside a city-wide e-waste collection campaign feeding directly into its installation art. For institutional and CSR audiences, it is a distinctive example of a commercially-run entertainment festival built around a genuine, externally verified sustainability practice (rather than sustainability messaging alone), with a documented circular-economy supply chain, livelihoods programme, and year-round education initiative (The Greener Side) extending well beyond its two-day headline event.
Mainstreamed sustainability in Indian festival production and platformed independent and world music.
