Do the Honey Bee! Rap Video Builds Buzz About Threats to Bees

In honor of National Honey Bee Awareness Day, five creative brothers from Los Altos, California made a rap video in which bee-costumed dancers shake their stingers to raise awareness about the plight of honey bees worldwide.

With some heavy reliance on Auto-Tune and the backing of the bee angels at Häagen-Dazs, Max Lanman, a 21-year-old senior at Yale majoring in film studies, directed, edited and photographed a short video featuring four of his brothers and a bunch of friends. One of the brothers, Connor Lanman, wrote a book called “Plight of the Bee” that originally caught Häagen-Dazs’ attention.

The choreography in the video is a nod to the “dance” that honeybees do when they return to the hive after a good round of pollinating. Check it out:

“We’re hoping that “Do The Honey Bee” will help raise honey bee awareness in a fun and original way, and appeal to the greater population,” Max Lanman told The Huffington Post.

Learn more about the challenges facing bees at HelpTheHoneyBees.com.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Who’s Who in Green: Chuck Leavell

Chuck Leavell is a tree farmer and long-time environmentalist, co-founding the environmental website Mother Nature Network (MNN) in 2008. He’s also plays keyboard with The Rolling Stones, and was a member of the Allman Brothers Band.

When he’s not playing with one of the world’s greatest rock bands, Leavell is managing a sustainable tree plantation just outside of Atlanta, acting as a board member of the U.S. Endowment for Forest Communities, overseeing MNN.com, writing books on forestry and speaking to Congress about environmental issues.

Born in Alabama, Leavell was inspired to become a musician at the age of 13 after seeing Ray Charles play, and at just 15 played on a number of records including Freddy North’s soul classic Don’t Take Her, She’s All I’ve Got. Leavell went on to perform with Sea Level, Eric Clapton, The Black Crowes, George Harrison and many more in addition to his 27 years in the Rolling Stones (fun fact: Keith Richards reportedly calls him “Boy Georgia”).

Leavell’s forest was a refuge after long stints on the road, and the musician credits his life on the tree farm with changing his views about the world. He decided he wanted to share his love for nature with as many people as possible, hoping to stir them into action.

After many years of work on behalf of the forests of the world, Leavell saw an opportunity to reach everyday people with an environmental website that spoke about important environmental issues in terms that are appealing and easy to understand. TIME Magazine has since called MNN “the green CNN”.

Leavell told Rockom.net,

Theodore Roosevelt said over 100 years ago at a conference on water issues in Memphis, Tennessee that if we don’t address the challenges that face our natural lands we stand little chance of solving other problems. I think he was right then and he’s right now. I do think that now the “sleeping giant” (America) is finally awakening to these challenges. Maybe not everyone, but I think enough of us now see that it’s inevitable we make changes in our lives, our energy sources and energy consumption, our development models and methodologies and so forth if we want to have a beautiful and safe world to live in.

I believe we also have to face some realities in population growth. It seems to me that the Europeans and some other countries have made more strides in all these matters than we have. But with the new Administration now in place, I’m confident that we will do better. Hey, I’m a grandparent now and I worry about the world our future generations will have to deal with.

Chuck Leavell’s Green Score: 54,009

Photo credit: ChuckLeavell.com

Phish Summer Tour Going Green(ish) with Help from Reverb

It’s virtually impossible for big-name musical acts to go on tour without racking up a giant carbon footprint. But, with the help of Portland, Maine-based nonprofit Reverb, bands like Phish are able to green as many aspects of their tour as possible including fan transportation, recycling, and powering their buses with biodiesel.

Reverb, which has worked on over 70 tours and 1,000 events since their launch in 2004, previously helped Phish reduce the environmental impact of their Hamptom Coliseum shows earlier this year and now they’re teaming up again for the band’s summer tour.

From Ecolocalizer:

Like they did for the Hampton shows, Phish and Reverb are teaming up with Pickup Pal to help fans find carpools to and from shows. Since many fans hit up multiple shows, driving hundreds of miles from town to town, this has a huge potential impact! Not only are they providing the resource, Phish has added an extra incentive! Check out this blurb from their recent newsletter:

After each show on this summers’ tour, we will pick twenty random Phish Ride Share participants to receive a free download of that night’s show. Please visit http://www.pickuppal.com/pup/erp/ for more information and to find the shows that you may be driving to or need a ride to.

The band set up a resource site through Reverb, Traveling Light, where fans can look up eco-friendly places to stay, eat, play, and even volunteer while on tour. They’re also encouraging fans to offset their trip’s impact through Native Energy.

Phish is also working with Reverb to reduce backstage waste and energy usage, and they’re using carbon offsets to neutralize CO2 emissions from the touring fleet, air travel, hotel accommodations and energy usage at the venues. The band and crew are all using reusable water bottles, all catering products will be biodegradable and compostable and food scraps will get composted as well.

That’s pretty impressive. It’s so nice to see bands – especially bands that go on gigantic tours – take responsibility and get proactive in reducing their environmental impact.

Find out whether your favorite band is working with Reverb to green up their act at ReverbRock.org.

Link [Ecolocalizer] + [Reverb]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Classical Pianist Uses Recycled Chips Bags for CD Cases

Classical pianist Soyeon Lee made a big environmental statement last year when she wore a dress made from over 6,000 juice pouches to her Carnegie Hall recital. Now, Lee is taking her passion for spreading environmental awareness even further by teaming up with TerraCycle Inc. to release her new album, Re!nvented, with the world’s most eco-friendly CD packaging.

Re!nvented CD cases are made from chip bags collected from millions of school children in North America. The bags are shredded and compressed to provide an alternative to PVC, the material most often used for jewel cases, which is petrochemical-based, difficult to recycle and is linked to elevated cancer rates among workers and people who live near manufacturing plants.

Lee, a Julliard-trained Korean pianist, is a winner of the 2004 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, as well as the Second and Mozart prizes of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Bronze Medal of the Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition. She was featured on the January 2006 cover of SYMPHONY magazine’s annual “Emerging Artists”issue and in the 2008 edition of Musical America’s “More Thrills of Discovery”.

Take a listen at Soyeon Lee’s website. ‘Re!nvented’ will drop on April 21st.

Link [Soyeon Lee]
Photo credit: Re!nvented

Another Day, Another Weird PETA Story

You’ve gotta hand it to them, PETA are masters at getting attention. All attention whores across the world should pay close attention to PETA’s tactics. They work. The animal rights organization is in the news once again after making a bizarre request of a UK pop group and getting rejected. They wanted the Pet Shop Boys to change their name to the “Rescue Shelter Boys”.

From BBC News, via Ecorazzi:

“Peta Europe has written to Pet Shop Boys with a request they are unable to agree to,” reads a post on the band’s official website. But the band admits the request “raises an issue worth thinking about”. Peta’s letter requests the name change due to the cruelty which they allege takes place in the pet trade. If the band were to agree to the name change, it continues, it would “encourage your millions of fans to consider giving a home to an abandoned or unwanted animal from an animal shelter”.

Even with the rejection, PETA has highlighted the issue of the mistreatment of animals sold at pet shops versus animals that can be adopted from rescue shelters. Bravo. Hey, at least this time they’re not requesting for dead human bodies to be turned into BBQ.

Link [BBC News] via [Ecorazzi]

Corey Feldman Releases ‘Green Song’ on Sustainable Album

Actor Corey Feldman is going where no former ‘80s child star has gone before: singing about the environment.  Who knew Corey Feldman was such a greenie? Feldman’s band, ‘Truth Movement’ will be releasing their album, entitled ‘Technology Analogy’, on November 25th.  The first single is called ‘Green is the Colour’, and is clearly Pink Floyd-inspired (in fact, that’s the name of a Pink Floyd song that appeared in the 1969 film ‘More’).

From Corey’s website, via Ecorazzi:

“Please don’t judge the album based soley on the listening pleasure you get from “Green is the Colour” because this song is just one piece of the bigger picture. A very exciting part of this song is that Zen and Corey’s niece Alexa are making their debut as recording artists. The two children narrate the introduction to the song and also sing the chorus at the end of the song. Remember, Green is not only the colour, but also a way of life! Go Green!!”

You know, I can’t say I’m a fan – though I was at that boy-crazy age at the height of Corey’s fame in the late ‘80s, I was more interested in guys like Axl Rose – but it’s a nice idea. And he is the less douchey of the Coreys.  The song actually made me laugh, and I don’t think that’s what they were going for. But, hey, the album was made with 100% biodegradable materials including recyclable paper, soy ink and a corn plastic tray, which is awesome.

Go listen for yourself at Corey Feldman’s official website.

Link [Ecorazzi] + [Corey Feldman]

Fans’ Green Poster Contest Entries Thrown in the Trash at Jonas Brothers Show

Scores of hysterical young fans of Disney band the Jonas Brothers were sorely disappointed Sunday night after their entries in a band-sponsored green poster contest ended up in the trash. The kids and their parents stood in line for hours with posters that they had labored over for who knows how long, only to throw them in the garbage when organizers decided there were too many posters to judge.

From The Chicago Tribune:

The Jonases have teamed up with Chevy for a Green Team Jonas promotion with a lucrative prize: meeting Disney heartthrobs Nick, Joe and Kevin. The theme of the poster contest was about having fun and thinking green. So-called “Chevy Spotters” were to be in the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre parking lots looking for possible winners.

But many of the posters covered with glitter glue and puffy paint were thrown in the trash, likely destined to end up in landfills, because there were too many to be judged outside

and the posters weren’t allowed in the venue. Ticket takers said the posters were banned because they could obstruct fans’ views.

One worker said the posters would be given to the Jonases later. But that did little to ease the disappointment of young fans seen dejectedly throwing their posters into huge garbage bins before the show.

Way to fail that green contest – sheesh. I think these kids – and the organizers of the contest – failed to grasp what ‘green’ means, namely that throwing all of that stuff in the trash is far from eco-friendly. Obviously these girls just wanted to meet the Jonas Brothers, and nary a thought was given to the idea that trashing the posters went against the whole point.

The worker who offered the platitude that the posters would be given to the guys later clearly panicked at the idea of an angry mob of boy-crazy teens and made up a total lie – can you imagine the Jonases walking into a room stuffed to the ceiling with posters covered in glitter and puff paint? For those who don’t have young daughters or sisters, Jonas Brothers mania is said to rival that of Beatles fans in the ‘60s, though I think they come off more as an American version of Menudo.

Sounds like the whole thing was a bad idea. Nice try, people, but – ECO FAIL!

Link [The Chicago Tribune]
Photo credit: E! Online

Featured Change Agent: Reverb Greening Up the Music Industry

Each week, EarthFirst.com will be featuring a new ‘Change Agent’ from Changents.com, a social media site that connects people who are doing good in the world with a support system of advocates, donors, publicity generators and fans.

Today’s featured change agent is Reverb, a non-profit organization that aims to clean up the music industry’s notorious wastefulness and pollution. Adam Gardner, Reverb’s founder, is a musician himself, and long complained to his environmentalist wife, Lauren, about the impact of his band’s tours. That’s when they came up with the idea of Reverb, and their first two projects were the Barenaked Ladies and Alanis Morissette’s ‘Au Natural’ tour in 2004. They’ve since worked with bands like the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys.

Check out this video of Adam Gardner talking about Reverb:

So, what exactly does Reverb do? Essentially, they help bands green up virtually any aspect of their tours, from running their buses on biodiesel to setting up recycling programs and going carbon neutral. They’ve helped bands make their merchandise eco-friendly, reduced waste and offered solar chargers for fans’ electronic devices.

From Reverb’s story on Changents:

Since 2004, we’ve greened 50 tours and 754 events, reduced over 38,000 tons of carbon dioxide, substituted over 265,000 gallons of biodiesel for conventional diesel, and reached over 5 million fans. Did you know that 80 percent of the carbon footprint associated with any tour comes from fans traveling to and from the show?!

While we’re helping bands and fans, we’re also working with more than 1,500 environmental non-profits to promote their messages and campaigns. What’s unique about Reverb is that we have one foot solidly in the environmental community and one foot solidly in the rock world.

For us, it’s about getting the tens of thousands of fans like you that bands are reaching every night to do a little something in their lives, even if it’s simply switching to a reusable water bottle. We’re also encouraging carpooling so fans will reduce their carbon footprints. Concerts are a perfect place to do car sharing – you’re all arriving and leaving at the same time. We’re trying out cool stuff like giving primo parking spaces to DMB concertgoers who motor to the show with at least four in a car.

Reverb’s ‘Eco Villages’ are an attraction themselves at shows, with a festival-like atmosphere and plenty of opportunities for music fans to learn about things like carbon offsetting, register to vote, win cool stuff and check out the latest green technologies. Fans can also get some help from reverb in offsetting their own carbon through the Fan Carbon Offset Program. They’ve partnered with PickupPal to help fans carpool to and from shows.

Want to help Reverb and have a lot of fun at the same time? Join their legion of volunteers and supporters through Changents and help them out with action requests like getting access to biodiesel in various cities, commenting on their blog, checking out their featured videos and helping them out at concerts (you can get free tickets!).

Link [Changents] + [Reverb] + [PickupPal]

Jack Johnson’s Concerts Keep Getting Greener

Jack Johnson is possibly the most sincere, walks-the-talk celebrity environmentalist ever. The musician from Hawaii (and one of our Top 25 Hottest Guys in Green) has a long list of environmental initiatives and achievements and it just keeps on growing. He makes sure that his concerts are uber-green – the greenest we’ve ever heard of, actually.

Jack’s not exactly the type to make typical diva demands backstage – in fact, his 9-page EnviroRider shows no signs of standard egocentric requirements like white lilies (Jennifer Lopez), no brown M&Ms (Van Halen), a wig room (Cher) or rose petals in the toilet (Barbra Streisand). Rather, it requests such things as compact fluorescent light bulbs, recycling bins, water bottle refill stations and VIP parking for hybrids.

From The Star Tribune:

“Setting up the water refill station was the biggest challenge,” said Minneapolis promoter Sue McLean, referring to how a pipe was run from the dressing room compound to a create 13-faucet watering trough. However, she wasn’t able to get the kind of recyclable cups requested.

“Some things are mandatory, some suggestions and some penalties,” she said.

Yes, there is a followup. Two weeks after the concert, Johnson’s people check back to make sure the promoters complied with waste disposal and recycling requirements. If not, the promoter is required to donate $500 to a local environmental organization. Thus far, there haven’t been any fines on the tour.

Jack also encourages fans to carpool, and his tour bus runs on biodiesel. His recording studio is mostly made up of reclaimed materials, and the plastic cases his CDs come in are made of recycled materials.

Link [The Star Tribune]

The French Won’t Bike to See Radiohead for Free

Radiohead, known for being an environmentally conscious band, had a previous free giveaway tactic meet with success – namely, their decision to release their most recent studio album ‘In Rainbows’ for whatever price the consumer wanted to pay, even if it was nothing at all. This time, though, they didn’t get as many takers.

From AOL:

… Radiohead were left with a row of empty seats at a recent French concert after a ticket giveaway backfired. The eco-friendly group announced 50 passes were available for their show at Paris’ Bercy Arena but fans could only get by cycling to their record label’s offices in the French city.

However, Parisians were not prepared to get on their bikes so 35 tickets went unclaimed. A source said: “Radiohead are using their current world tour to highlight their commitment to green issues. They advise all concertgoers to use public transport and are doing all they can to make their carbon footprint as small as possible. Unfortunately the French didn’t appear to share their noble intentions and roundly ignored the free ticket tactic.”

Strange – bicycling is fairly popular in this city, which even has a nearly one-year-old bike share program. Riding a bike, indeed, is one of the best ways to experience Paris, and as in Amsterdam, Parisians are often seen riding beach cruisers in full formal wear. Perhaps Parisians just aren’t that into Radiohead, or the giveaway wasn’t promoted widely enough.

Link [AOL]
Photo credit: Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik

Biofuels and Carbon Credits: Greening Up the Concert Industry

The music industry is renowned for its excess. More often than not, you can see some really stunning examples of wastefulness during the concerts themselves, backstage and in every facet of preparation and production. It’s not just wasted energy – pollution and trash are huge factors as well. Many musicians have been willing to participate in efforts to raise awareness – like the Live Earth concerts – but not to actually make changes in their own lifestyles or even their regular performances.

The Economist has it:

According to National Geographic’s Green Guide, a typical stadium concert releases 500 to 1000 tons of carbon dioxide, which is between 25 and 50 times more than the average American produces in a year. That number does not even take into account fans’ transport, the immense amount of garbage produced or any fire-spewing Kiss-style pyrotechnic displays. Reverb, an advocacy group promoting environmentally responsible music tours, estimates that fans’ commutes can quintuple the carbon cost of a show.

Despite these costs, tour schedules are growing longer and more intensive. Consumers are downloading (both legally and illegally) more individual tracks and buying fewer complete albums; bands need to make their money somewhere.

Some bands and concert organisers have taken strides to minimise touring’s environmental impact. Festivals such as Lollapalooza, an American summer institution, and Britain’s massive Glastonbury Festival have switched to biofuel-powered generators. The organisers of last summer’s Osheaga Festival in Montreal went one step further: they hired Hydro Quebec to supply their main stage with emission-free geothermal energy. Reverb has encouraged organisers to offer reusable aluminum canteens rather than plastic water-bottles, and also set up “Eco-Villages”, with information on how to minimise one’s carbon footprints, outside concert venues.

Since so many bands are mostly all talk and no action, there’s still a lot of waste going on despite efforts to curb it. Some bands claim to be green and then go and schedule a concert at places like the Gorge Amphitheather, which is 150 miles east of Seattle and far from any public transportation. In order to make a real change, bands would need to commit to scaling back their shows and holding them at venues accessible by public transit. Maybe that could help us take concerts back to their roots – intimate experiences enjoying the music you love played live right in front of you, not giant impersonal productions where the band is a football field away.

Fans now have the option of carpooling to and from shows thanks to Reverb partnering with PickupPal. The service, which we told you about last month, provides a venue for passengers to be matched up with drivers to cut back on the number of vehicles on the road. Reverb is also currently working with acts like John Mayer, Norah Jones, Kelly Clarkson, the Blue Man Group and Ben Folds to reduce the carbon footprints of their tours.

Link [The Economist]
Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyatlarge

New Green Carpool Service Matches You Up with Rides to Concerts

Summer is the season of concerts, and all of us driving separately to get there isn’t exactly green. The folks at Reverb, who are already known for helping bands cut down their carbon footprint, have teamed up with PickupPal, a carpool service, to help people share rides when going to a concert.

From Mashable:

The partnership between PickupPal and Reverb won’t go live until next week, but PickupPal has already provided carpooling options for the Coachella Festival, and will be doing the same for the upcoming Virgin Mobile Festivals in Canada.

PickupPal provides a venue for passengers to match up with drivers to get around, giving the driver a small commission for their services. You submit a ride request to the PickupPal site and interested drivers offer rides. You check out their profile and make a decision based on reviews and the price. Afterward, the driver pays a small commission to PickupPal via PayPal.

It’s a pretty cool new way to get around, and all the better when going to concerts – hell, you can drink all you want and don’t have to worry about how you’re going to get home. My only concern is, do they let you search by drug preference? I mean, I don’t want to ride back home after a show rolling on E with a bunch of tweaked out speed freaks.

Link [Mashable]
Photo credit: Universal Pictures