What Bad Bunny taught me about Sustainability
- Samantha
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
The lights cut. The bass drops. Bad Bunny, who just reclaimed the world’s #1 artist spot, walks out on stage. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of strangers become one collective: dancing, crying, screaming, alive.
At Bad Bunny’s residency show in Puerto Rico earlier this year, I felt that moment land in my body before my mind caught up. The production was overwhelming: sound that vibrated through your body, lasers carving the stadium into bands of color. But the technology wasn’t what mattered; it was what happened to the crowd. In a single moment, we stopped being individuals and became a gathering of collective aliveness - smiling, dancing, and present in the moment.
That moment keeps returning to me as I think about our work at Plant Futures. Not because Bad Bunny sings about sustainability, but because his concert highlighted something climate action and organizations can harness: culture moves people in ways facts never will. Taking in the moment in the stadium, I learned something no classroom ever could: you don’t talk people into changing, you invite them into moments so powerful they can’t un-see what’s possible.
After the show, my friends and I dove into the heart of San Juan, hopping between different reggaeton dance spaces. The community welcomed us like family. We danced until the sun came up, grinning like kids, my love for my friends swelling with every song (shoutout to Daniel, Dalila, Mariella, and Mariah!). No agenda, just joy.
That’s when it clicked: what those nights and Plant Futures have in common is that belonging and community come first.
We’ve spent decades trying to guilt people into caring about the planet. Statistics about carbon. Warnings about the collapse of the food system. And while the data matters, we still are falling short.
We need spaces and to design systems where people unite over the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself. The liberation of moving your body in a crowd that accepts you. The simple, radical act of collective joy.
That’s why Plant Futures shows up at music festivals. That’s why we believe culture is the engine of change.
When sustainability lives only in classrooms, research papers, and certifications, it stays abstract. But when it shows up where people already are, where they feel alive - on dancing at festivals, cheering at sports games, in the spaces where community forms organically, it becomes a celebration, not a sacrifice.
Artists who build movements, like Bad Bunny, don’t pack stadiums by winning arguments. They create a container for liberation and collective joy.
That’s our work too. Not convincing or guilt-tripping people, but by creating spaces where a sustainable future feels like somewhere you can be yourself and connect with amazing people.
If you’ve ever danced at a festival with your friends or with strangers who somehow feel like family, you already know that belonging and joy come first. That’s what it means to be human.
So when people ask what reggaeton and music festivals have to do with Plant Futures, I think about that Bad Bunny show. The dancing, the smiles, the sense of freedom. How happy and alive I felt with the friends and community I love so deeply. How joy reaches places that arguments never will.
We’re not here to convince anyone. We’re here to build communities of joy and throw the kind of party that makes a better future feel inevitable.
And we’re only getting started!
If you are designing festivals or cultural convenings, please reach out. I’d love to learn how you are building at the intersection of culture, climate, and joy!
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