Green Days - Musicians Walk The Talk Of Climate Consciousness, by Adam Gardner
Posted by dumbdrummer on March 31, 2008
Eric’s Introduction
I’m a hypocrite. There, I said it. At home I’m a militant environmentalist - I recycle, turn my heat down when I can, unplug my phone and camera chargers, and turn lights off when I leave a room. But when I hit the road with a band, it’s party time. I see it in my band mates, too. We leave the familiarity and creature comforts of home and our conscientiousness disappears. “It’s just too hard to do,” we tell ourselves.
True enough, it’s hard. But it’s also true that the time has come where we have no choice but to reform our wild ways. Whether the cause is human or not, we now know Earth’s climate is changing in a way that threatens life on earth as we know it. We also know that it’s in our power to slow or stop this change.
From the civil rights movement, to the Vietnam War, to today’s conflict in the Middle East, musicians have always been the earliest, and clearest voices for needed change. My good friend, Adam Gardner, from the band Guster, along with his brilliant wife, Lauren, are among the loudest and wisest music-industry voices calling for increased awareness about how we can literally change the world.
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“Green” seems to be on everyone’s mind these days. Thanks to Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, the Live Earth concerts, and tons of magazines’ green issues, concern for the environment has hit the mainstream. The question that immediately follows this concern is, “What can I do about it?” Many rock bands, students, and music fans alike who ask themselves this question are left with a feeling of wanting to be a part of the solution, but aren’t sure where to begin.
For me, I started looking at the effects I had on the environment while touring with my band, Guster. We were aware of the impact of riding on a fuel-guzzling tour bus around the country for years and were bummed about it—we had been nick-naming it the “Earth-Eater.” Garbage left behind by fans covered the floor after shows and very few venues had any sort of recycling program. We started to think about the merchandise we were selling to our fans and where we sourced it from—what was it made out of? How far did it get shipped? Were we actually eating all the food we asked for backstage on our contract rider? What changes could we make to have a more green, environmentally safe tour?
Fortunately for Guster I married an environmentalist, Lauren Sullivan. Lauren and I met in college shortly after I met my band mates. While I’ve been running around in a rock band for the past 16 years, she’s been fighting the good fight for the environment. Through her work on certain environmental campaigns that were backed by major artists like Bonnie Raitt and the Dave Matthews Band, Lauren saw first hand how valuable adding these musician’s voices were to the success of the campaigns.
In 2002, Bonnie Raitt launched an environmental awareness campaign on tour at her concerts called Green Highway. She combined eco-friendly practices on tour while also setting up a festival-like Eco-Village in the concourse area to raise awareness for the environment. This two-pronged approach to greening tours became the model for how Lauren and I would help other bands follow Bonnie’s incredible example. In 2004, Lauren and I formed (with much help from Bonnie Raitt and her manager Kathy Kane) the environmental non-profit, Reverb. Reverb’s mission is to help bands and their fans answer the question “What can I do about saving the environment?”
So far, Reverb has helped green over 50 major rock tours, over 700 events, kept over 30,000 tons of CO2 from the air, fueled touring fleets with over 300,000 gallons of biodiesel, partnered with over 1,200 environmental non-profit groups and have reached over 4.5 million concertgoers. The artists that have enlisted Reverb to help them go green include Dave Matthews Band, Linkin Park, Maroon 5, Jack Johnson, Barenaked Ladies, John Mayer, Alanis Morissette, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guster, and many more.
Dave Matthews Band’s 2007 summer tour is a great example of how a huge touring entity can go green while getting their fans to take simple actions to make a big difference. As a result, the tour reduced over 3,300,000 pounds of CO2 – equivalent to removing 190 homes from the power grid for an entire year. Over one third of this carbon reduction is a direct result of fans participating in the Reverb Fan Carbon Offset Program, where concertgoers neutralized the CO2 from over 1,200,000 miles of driving to and from shows. For more details on the tour results and efforts go to: www.ReverbRock.org/dmb.
Another example on a smaller level is with my own band, Guster. Guster and Reverb finished their second annual Campus Consciousness Tour—a national music/environmental tour of colleges and universities that includes daytime activities such as the “Pimp My Clean Ride” tour of the band’s biodiesel-powered tour bus and a “Town Hall Forum” with students, faculty, members of the band, and administrators to discuss sustainability on campus.
Going green isn’t an “all-or-nothing” proposition. You don’t have to change your entire world all at once. Do what you can to get started and see where it takes you. Each time Guster goes out on tour we add a new element. Once you start looking through the environmental lens, you’ll be amazed at how many simple, commonsense changes you can make.
Below are some ideas and resources to help you get started, whether you are about to go on a national arena tour, are playing a few gigs around town, or just want to make some changes around the house:
- BioDiesel— If you’re traveling in a diesel car, van, bus, or truck, biodiesel may be a good option for you. Biodiesel is a domestically produced vegetable-based alternative to petroleum diesel that emits over 75% less CO2 and reduces dependency on foreign oil. Biodiesel can run in any diesel engine with little to no modification. If you have oil heat in your home you can also switch to BioHeat, a blend of biodiesel and #2 heating oil. . For more info and to locate pumps and suppliers check out: www.biodiesel.org.
- Idling—If you are parking for more than 10 seconds, turn off your engine. Idling gets you exactly zero miles per gallon. If you are touring with a fleet of busses and trucks, ask your drivers to adhere to a no idling policy.
- Waste Vegetable Oil—Smaller bands that want to run on free fuel and don’t mind the adventure of dumpster diving at chinese restaurants across the country, can modify their diesel cars to run on grease. www.greasecar.com
- Catering supplies— Use reusable coffee mugs, silverware, plates, etc. whenever possible. Another option is biodegradables: corn cups, sugarcane bowls and plates, and potato starch utensils are all good alternatives to petroleum and Styrofoam-based products. You can find some of this at Whole Foods and on line: www.worldcentric.org
- Reusable Water Bottles—By switching from cases and cases of bottled water to five-gallon coolers and using reusable bottles, you can reduce a huge amount of waste over the course of a tour. I like the Sigg bottles: www.mysigg.com
- Recycling—Request recycling on your contract rider to venues and promoters (many venues still don’t recycle). You can also bring your own foldable recycling bins—you’ll be amazed how fast you fill them up, and how little garbage you produce that isn’t recyclable. www.clearstreamrecycler.com
- Non-toxic cleaning products—Research shows that we spend 90% of our lives indoors. Using non-toxic cleaners in your home and on your tour bus is an easy way to reduce indoor air pollution which can be many times greater than outdoor air pollution. A great resource for non-toxic living is: www.thenakedtruth.org
- Renewable Energy Offsets— After shrinking your environmental “footprint” as much as possible, you can neutralize remaining CO2 emissions from venue energy use, hotels, flights, touring vehicles, and fan travel by purchasing carbon offsets that support the construction of new renewable energy projects such as wind farms. reduce energy demands from carbon-emitting power sources such as coal-fired power plants. www.nativeenergy.com/reverb
- Digital Downloads—Buy music digitally and encourage your fans to do the same. This produces zero waste. For physical copies of albums try to produce them using post-consumer-recylced paperboard rather than plastic jewel cases.
- Spread the word without preaching—Nobody wants a sermon, especially at a concert! However, you can make your enthusiasm contagious by providing links on your website, having an environmental blog, and inviting local non-profit groups to table at your concerts.
For more ideas and to check out what other bands are doing to go green, go to: www.ReverbRock.org.
Adam Gardner is the guitarist/vocalist for the rock band Guster and Co-Founder (along with his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan) of the non-profit environmental organization Reverb. Operating from deep within the music industry and the environmental world, Reverb “greens” artists’ tours and the music business at large while educating and inspiring music fans to take action.
