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

Bette Midler Quits Touring to Help Save the Planet

If you want to see Bette Midler live, you’ll have to plan a trip to Las Vegas.  The singer won’t be going on the road anymore from now on, she says, because the fleet of 14 trucks needed to ship her show from city to city is having way too harmful of an impact on the environment.  Instead, she’ll be performing a $13 million dollar residency in Sin City.

From Sky News:

“Over the years, the number of trucks that I have behind me has grown exponentially and I don’t really like that, I don’t like wasting the gas,” she told me on a promotional trip to London.

“Fourteen trucks, that’s a lot of gas. So I decided I’d stay put for a while,” she added.

Surely moving equipment in trucks is unavoidable for a touring show, I ask her?

“I can avoid it,” she says, shaking her head, and going on to provide an impressive list of her green credentials that would put most celebrities to shame.

“I don’t drive much, I have a Smart car, I have a hybrid, I drive a [Toyota] Prius,” she says.

This is awesome, but thousands of people traveling to Vegas isn’t as green as can be, either.  May we suggest that, if Ms. Midler wishes to go on the road again in the future, she contact Reverb for help making her tour more green? 14 trucks definitely isn’t necessary, and I’m sure there are a thousand different ways they could green up her show.  Whether or not she ever goes back on her decision not to tour again, kudos to her for realizing that she could be doing better by the planet.  If only more people would stop to think about how much pollution they’re causing as they go about their daily business, we’d be a lot further along in our fight against global warming.

Link [Sky News]

Who’s Who in Green: Adam Gardner

Many people may already know Adam Gardner from his band Guster, in which he sings and plays guitar.  But playing music isn’t Adam’s only passion – he’s also an environmental activist, having co-founded Reverb with his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan.  Reverb greens up summer tours, making sure that all that partying has as small a footprint on the earth as possible.

There’s a certain stereotype of musicians trashing everyplace they go – from hotel rooms to stadiums – but not all musicians go around wasting resources and littering just for the hell of it.  Adam says many of them want to do better, but they lack the know-how and resources.  That’s where Reverb comes in.

Adam and Lauren were inspired to start Reverb when he was touring with Guster back in 2004 and they barely had a chance to see each other.  Looking for a way to merge their worlds, Lauren realized how powerful it can be to have artists back causes.  They decided to help bands that wanted to go green, doing all of the research for them and making it easy for them to stick to their commitment.

Reverb has worked with acts like Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Panic at the Disco, The Dave Matthews Band, Maroon 5, Kelly Clarkson, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sheryl Crow.  Reverb has helped green more than 50 tours, reducing 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide and distributing about 250,000 gallons of biodiesel to music acts.  Reverb’s greening services include recycling, waste reduction, green bus supplies and cleaners, biodegradable catering products, energy efficiency, a green contract rider, eco-friendly merchandise and green sponsorship.

Reverb also helps spread the message to fans through interactive exhibits at concerts, like their ‘Eco Village’.  The Eco Village creates a festival-like atmosphere and puts the spotlight on local and national non-profits, as well as green technologies and eco-friendly samples.  Fans can offset their own carbon, register to vote and sign up to win prizes.  Each Eco Village is built to reflect the band’s causes and interests.

Adam also testified on Capitol Hill last fall about the benefits of biofuel to the music industry, telling Billboard Magazine, “I’ve never been more nervous in my life.  I basically said, ‘We’d love for Reverb to be out of business, as far as coordinating biodiesel for tours,’ ” he says. “[Artists] should be able to pull up to any ol’ truck stop and get it. It shouldn’t be something we have to find for tours.”

Of Reverb’s use of carbon offsets, Adam told Ecorazzi,

“Let’s talk about offsets for a sec. The NY Times has been running a bunch [of articles] about it lately. This is what I think about offsets: I think obviously you need to reduce your footprint first and foremost. You gotta do what you can to be more efficient, use less energy and create less carbon. So obviously you are shrinking your footprint first.

“And then there is some inevitable footprint left over – well then what do you do with that? That’s where I think offsets do come in. And the key to offsets is making sure that you’re buying them from the right place. Because carbon offsets are not created equal.

“There are a lot people out there that see dollar signs and are selling things that aren’t carbon offsets. We use Native Energy and what I like about them is that money goes directly towards building new renewable energy sources like wind farms and solar arrays. So to me that’s what you want to do, you want to be able to point to something and say that got built with my help. And that’s an offset – you’re creating something that otherwise wouldn’t have existed without your help. Help being in this case, simply buying renewable energy credits.”

As the world becomes more environmentally aware, no doubt more musicians will be looking to green up their act.  Adam Gardner has helped start a revolution in the music industry, and the world is far better off for it.

Adam Gardner’s Green Score: 28,983

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]

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