Monday, 28 June 2010 13:50

For all the songs written about the glory of rock n' roll life, the road can be tough.  Yes "tough, tough stuff" in the words of Tenacious D.  But the road can also be wasteful stuff.  

Although you are essentially carpooling when on the road, you are doing a lot of driving which if you are not on biodiesel, can be a good deal of CO2.  Nevermind if you are somebody like Radiohead or U2, which also means a considerable amount of flights around the world. 

Something of a coalition from the company that helps bands green their tours- Reverb-, the Green Music Group is a collection of venues and bands that have joined forces to be a bit more responsible about what comes in and out of a tour bus.  No, I'm not talking groupies, there's of course nothing wrong with sharing, and I'm not talking about drugs and glass bottles of beer and alcohol.  The GMG is watching out for all those plastic bottles of water that get used by musicians while they are working it onstage and backstage.

From the website, http://challenge.greenmusicgroup.org/ Bonnie Rait issues a challenge to step away from the bottle and this time she means the plastic water bottle:

Disposable water bottles create a ton of unnecessary plastic waste in concessions and backstage. We green music types have been working hard to reduce this waste by offering reusable water bottles as merchandise items to fans and using refillable bottles on tour both onstage and behind the scenes.

I's about time that we realize how much waste we've been creating through rock n' roll since the day after Woodstock. 

Also check out CREx (Carbon Reduction and Energy Exchange www.crexonline.org)  a local non-profit initiative that has been working with the FEST for past three years to do the same thing as Reverb that is, to bring to light the amount of CO2 emitted by such great events, and offering education and ways to reduce or offset emissions.  Only we're doing it local...