This is an extensive guide for musicians and music fans on how to reduce our impact on the planet. It describes a few of the most harmful activities we participate in and how to make them more eco-friendly. That way, we can indulge our passion for music while treading lightly on the earth. You don’t have to digest all of this right now. There’s so much information here, it would be a good idea to bookmark it and keep coming back to it. Implement one thing at a time into your life before trying the next one. I’d like to add even more items to the list as time goes on, so that’s another good reason to bookmark it and come back to it. This article is part of Blog Action Day which we have been promoting here on HearingTest since August, but we post articles about the environment regularly here. If you like this one, dig through our culture archives to see more about what musicians and music lovers are doing to benefit Planet Earth.

This is Part 1 of a 4 part series. Links to the other installments are below. This part is specifically for musicians – ways to be more eco-aware about touring, gigging, producing albums and distribution, and promotion. It’s an educational read for anyone and can be easily applied to other professions such as writers, publicists, sales peeps, anyone who travels anywhere…

Green is IN this year

Being environmentally conscious is not only good for the earth and good for the soul and good for the next seven generations, it’s also good for PR, for ratings, and for sales. Everybody is going green this year: bands, concerts, music festivals, movies and tv shows. One of america’s most viewed television shows, America’s Next Top Model, has chosen to incorporate environmental awareness into their current season. Rock band Korn is working on their own formula of biodiesel. Plus Live Earth, 11th Hour, Cheryl Crow, Al Gore and on and on and on…
This is great for the environmental movement! Free publicity from high-profile celebrities is a good thing. But it means nothing if everybody else isn’t doing their part. High profile green campaigns and eco-conscious celebrities represent a small minority of people making a difference to save the world for our children, our grandchildren, their grandchildren and on for the next seven generations of our heritage. The planet depends on the participation of everyone living on it.

As musicians and music enthusiasts, we have an even bigger responsibility to reduce our impact on the planet. The average person does not fly to a distant city to play or hear a concert. Nor do they produce 1,000 to 100,000 plastic based objects, then ship them all over the globe. It is a luxury to log mile after mile on a tour bus, stopping to play a show that attracts a throng of music fans in cars. Nah mean? The music industry is especially destructive to the environment, but it doesn’t have to be. There are ways to neutralize our impact on the planet and still enjoy every aspect of music culture to the fullest.

As artists and art enthusiasts, we have an even bigger responsibility to reduce our impact on the planet.

Flying

The biggest, meanest activity is flying in airplanes. Whether you’re flying to your next gig, flying to attend Lollapalooza, Sasquatch, Pitch4k, or flying to be part of Live Earth, airplanes are the most destructive tool available to civilians. Airplanes rip the atmosphere. If you do need to fly, you need to purchase carbon credits to offset some of the harm done. It’s not a fair exchange, but it’s better than nothing.

FOR MUSICIANS:

:: Tour Buses ::
Most tour buses are run on diesel fuel to begin with, so it’s a very simple choice to run them on biodiesel. Biodiesel can fuel any diesel vehicle without any modifications and it is good for the engine. Biodiesel actually cleans out residue left behind by regular diesel which makes your vehicle run even better, but this residue ends up in the fuel filter, so you should change this once after using biodiesel for a stretch. Fuel filters are one of the cheapest parts on a vehicle and extremely easy to change, even on a big tour bus. Biodiesel is more widely available everyday, so it is easy to map out biodiesel fueling stations along a tour route. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oil, sometimes even recycled vegetable oil (used fryer grease from restaurants). B100 is 100% biodiesel, B80 is 80% biodiesel mixed with 20% regular diesel and B20 is 20% biodiesel mixed with 80% regular diesel. Always try to get B100 and try to avoid anything less than B80.

:: Band Vehicles ::
For bands that own their tour vehicles, you can take this a step further. Diesel is still the way to go – you can make your own biodiesel at home for local giggin and band practices and/or you can add a grease kit to the engine to run your vehicle on 100% vegetable oil. That’s right, any diesel vehicle can be easily converted to run on SVO which stands for straight vegetable oil and it’s just that, veggie oil. The oil can be new or recycled, it doesn’t matter. You can pull up to a fast food restaurant and fill up on their used fryer grease (many restaurants pay a company to haul it off, so often they are thrilled when someone offers to take some for free). For more info on SVO, jump ahead to the music fans section on vehicles.

The more consumers demand and expect instant gratification through digital downloads of everything from music and movies to television shows and books, the less waste is being relegated to overflowing landfills.

:: Albums ::
CD sales are in decline because music fans are no longer interested in the format. We live in a society of instant gratification and 80GB music storage devices. CDs scratch easily, wear out over time, the cases break the first time you drop them, and the overall package requires a lot of shipping. The most environmentally friendly option is digital downloads, which nowadays can be equal or better quality than CDs. Of course, there is still much joy in collecting a physical format so if you want to stamp your music onto a disc, go vinyl. Vinyl lasts a very long time (I have records from the 50′s that still play beautifully) and provide a lot of value to a collector. Vinyl can be (and usually is today) made from recycled records whereas CDs can not. Record packaging can also be made from a wide range of recycled materials. Maybe this is why vinyl continues to be popular while tape and CD become obsolete. I have stacks and stacks of vinyl records and I cherish each one. I’ve also never thrown out a record’s packaging. The record and it’s packaging are like pieces of art. I definitely cannot say the same for my CD collection. Shipping vinyl is, of course, still a detriment to the environment until more trucks are run on cleaner fuels.

:: Promotion ::
Most promotion these days should be done electronically. Most of the people that receive promo materials prefer it this way. Press releases, videos, audio, even whole albums are sent via email or links to downloads. For those rare cases when a physical copy is needed, make sure that the recipient wants the promo copy. So many music journalists/critics and booking agents complain of the stacks of unwanted, unsolicited promotional materials that cover their desk. (Yeah, I know, “Poor us, we get so much free stuff.” But if you write about rap music and someone sends you a country album for review, wtf are you supposed to do with it? For some strange reason this happens a lot.)

One of the beautiful side effects of the new “on-demand” culture is a reduction of trash. The more consumers demand and expect instant gratification through digital downloads of everything from music and movies to television shows and books, the less waste is being relegated to overflowing landfills. We can decrease disposable culture by embracing electronic formats over “physical” formats and choosing artistic collector’s items over homogeneous mass productions.

Music Lover’s Guide To Going Green Links

Music Lover’s Guide To Going Green Part 2 – Vehicles or, “How To Laugh When Gas Prices Hit $10/Gallon”
Part 3 has not been published yet. Check back here for the link next week…

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