Yours & Owls are known for throwing huge concerts in scenic parkland by the sea but their love of the outdoors goes further than that.

Co-founder Ben Tillman and his team are event organisers with an environmental conscience and, in between live gigs, they run a greening program to encourage music lovers to volunteer, clean up and regenerate local bushland.

“We basically give tickets away to encourage people to volunteer,” Ben said,

“We have a system set up – we get people who are volunteering with an interest in bush regeneration, and we work alongside the other organisations and council to help out and look after the environment.”

This has brought a fresh batch of younger volunteers to council’s long-running programs like Rise & Shine and Bushcare. Over the past six years, Yours and Owls have supported several council-led initiatives, including bush regeneration, native plantings and coastal clean-ups at Wollongong’s foreshores and reserves.

The festival organisers' commitment to sustainability was acknowledged at Wollongong City Council’s 2024 Environment Volunteer Awards, when Yours and Owls received the Rise & Shine Community Group Business Award.

Their greening program has also drawn hundreds of volunteers to events such as the annual January clean-up at Puckeys Estate, when participants remove invasive weeds and replant native species.

Since 2018, they’ve planted more than 1500 native seedlings and picked up lots of litter along the coast from Fairy Meadow to North Wollongong.

When the annual Yours & Owls festival was held at Flagstaff Hill in March 2025, Ben said the team faced the challenge of accounting for the environmental impact of hosting over 15,000 punters on Wollongong’s coastline.

So they took steps to protect the area, with measures including:

• Zero single-use plastics and compostable material alternatives;
• Strategic placement of recycling/green waste bins to minimise landfill contamination;
• Composting toilet trials to reduce water and chemical usage;
• Post-event clean-ups focusing on South Beach near the festival site;
• No plastic wristbands.

“There’s the specific event plan, of trying to minimise waste and make sure that it all ends up in the proper places and making sure it’s dealt with properly,” Ben says.

“And then in the past we’ve spent a lot of time regenerating the area right on the water, at Puckeys Estate. There’s been a lot of tree planting and removal of rubbish or foreign objects.

“This year we thought it would be nice to do something a bit closer to the actual festival site, so we did it down at South Beach.”

As lifelong Illawarra residents, Ben and his team understand the importance of protecting their home turf. Their partnership with Wollongong City Council’s Natural Areas Coordinator, Greg Fikkers, has been an especially supportive one.

“We have a great relationship with council. We’ve grown a lot in the event space together,” Ben says.

“Thanks [to council] for working with us and doing something that is having an actual immediate impact.

“And thank you to everyone who’s taken part in the greening program as well, all the volunteers and people who have helped out over the years.”

Keep an eye out for volunteer applications on Yours & Owls website.