How sound are the music industry’s green shoots? Can an industry so reliant on power, flight and production ever play a part in reducing carbon emissions? Are cover versions the only true way of recycling music and just how does one feed a musical addiction if vinyl, CDs and gatefolds just add to the climate’s current troubles?
The music industry is beginning to take green seriously. This summer, its biggest names performed at Live Earth to raise public awareness of the dangers facing our planet. Within the industry itself, a new attempt to heighten awareness for green issues is the recently formed not-for-profit organisation, Julie’s Bicycle, led by Jazz Summers, Chairman of the Music Managers Forum (see Comment p 15). This venture aims to form an industry-wide conscience with a view to reducing carbon emissions from the beginning of the creative process right through to the consumers’ chosen product.
To begin with, Julie’s Bicycle has commissioned The Environmental Change Institute (part of Oxford University) to research the music industry’s current emissions. Based on the outcome, due this autumn, Julie’s Bicycle will draw up a plan to reduce emissions across the music industry. They intend to leave no emission unturned, as Director Al Tickell explains: ‘The music industry is keen to understand the science and implications of climate change,’ she says. ‘There is growing consensus that the consequences of climate instability compel us to do what we can to decelerate the process, and adapt to the new environment that we are living in. This is a moment where the industry is coming together and aggregating its component parts to make a significant and demonstrable difference.’
'the effect of greenhouse emissions have never been more obvious'
So as well as singing, talking and thinking about it, what actual examples can be found from within the music industry to demonstrate that it is serious about shrinking the size of its carbon footprint?
Record company EMI is conducting extensive research into the impact of delivering its music digitally. Downloads drastically reduce the amount of packaging involved in an artists’ work, although the environmental impact of all those machines doing the downloading has yet to be taken into account.
Mean Fiddler Managing Director Melvin Benn has appointed a sustainability manager for his events group, who has been charged with ‘monitoring and auditing’ the company. Benn said: ‘I’ve brought in someone to effectively make fairly straightforward, simple changes. Things like making sure that we’re ordering the right paper or cleaning materials, and recycling what we can recycle.’
At the launch of Julie’s Bicycle in July, Live Nation UK former Managing Director Stuart Galbraith said that his company was on the verge of appointing its first-ever environment management executive after discovering that last year’s Live Nation-staged Download Festival generated a litter bill of £250,000 – double the amount budgeted – and 700 tonnes of landfill.
And Universal Records is making its mark – in conjunction with Asda, which in July 2007 became the first supermarket to stock environmentally friendly CDs. By putting discs by artists including The Beatles, Queen, Robbie Williams and Oasis come in fully compostable packaging, Asda and Universal hope to address an issue often overlooked. A spokesman for Asda commented that this was a revolutionary reaction to some worrying research: ‘Our recent research into CD recycling found that up to 25% of all plastic CD covers are thrown away within 12 months of purchase.’ And so the grooves of the future need to be biodegradable. ‘The new CD packaging will be made from 100% recycled and recyclable paper-foam (which can be recycled along with newspapers and magazines) and will be stocked in all of our 336 stores in the very near future’. Andy Powell, Asda’s music buyer, comments: ‘Making our CD boxes compostable will strike the right note with music lovers, while saving the earth’s resources. Pop pickers are used to bands recycling hits, now we’re recycling the cases as well.’
But is this approach where the future of greener music lies? At the moment (and perhaps not unexpectedly), many more initiatives are being spearheaded by the artists themselves. For them, climate control is looking less bandwagon and more bang on, and behaviour that just a few years ago may have appeared eccentric is now looking the sensible – in fact essential – reaction to our current climate crisis.
The Dave Matthews Band has offset 100% of carbon emissions caused by its touring since 1991, whilst Orbital, no doubt with the help of rechargeable batteries in their headsets, recorded songs using solar electricity (complete with environmental commentary lyrics of course).
Elsewhere, Above & Beyond were the first club DJs to go carbon neutral, Peter And The Wolf tour by boat, Pearl Jam offset and Jack Johnson operates out of an eco-friendly building and has co-founded an environmental education programme in Hawaii. Meanwhile, US duo the Ditty Bops tour by bicycle whilst UK band National Snack, a cross between Mudhoney and the Weather Girls, dream of a nationwide cart and horse driven tour. Perhaps less beats, more gallops per minute here.
Artist Project Earth (APE) aims to reduce greenhouse gas emission to levels that, the website states: ‘Minimise further degradation of ecological systems and human livelihood’. APE was behind the recent Rhythms Del Mundo Project in which western artists joined forces with members of the Buena Vista Social Club to record popular familiar songs fused with Latin rhythms.
'the music industry needs to tackle climate change'
And then of course there was Live Earth. Whilst for some it was just a drop in the (polluted) ocean, to others it signified a seriousness that had to be taken before it was too late. Artic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders was quoted in the press as saying: ‘we’re using enough power for ten houses just for lighting so it’d be a bit hypocritical [if we played Live Earth].’ But it did switch on the hypothetical light bulb for many – even if that only meant switching off the real ones more often. With over two billion viewers, 100 artists and bands and events staged at official concerts in New York, London, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hamburg, Live Earth - thanks to Al Gore and his global vision - did pull the world’s attention. Alicia Keys, Baaba Maal, Duran Duran, Genesis, Smashing Pumpkins, Spinal Tap and Pussycat Dolls may not strike you as eco-warriors and Madonna’s performance- enhanced plea of: ‘If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down!’ may not seem the most convincing of environmental manifestos but, for one day, the world did appear to be tuned into climate concerns.
Elsewhere, at the summer’s festivals, consumers were constantly being reminded of the need for green credentials.
Green ‘police’ at Glastonbury rammed home the recycling message whilst the Big Green Gathering – as the name would suggest –claimed to be the greenest of all with events and performances ‘powered by the wind, the sun and the people….with a conscious green edge.’ This festival delivered a real eco-holiday alternative, complete with sustainable menus and Croissant Neuf’s solar powered music, sound and lighting rig. Other festivals including Bestival, Lodestar and The Big Chill delivered some seriously green credentials, too, with an eye on leaving no trace except the beat laden memories in your head days after.
But if you’re not touring or can’t cut your plastic packaging, what else can be done? What can publishers, individual songwriters and composers and organisations like the MCPS-PRS Alliance do to ‘grow green’?
The Government-funded Carbon Trust has a number of easy to implement ideas for businesses. The Alliance has instigated a number of them including installing low energy lightbulbs, introducing recycling points, ensuring all company paper is 100 per cent recycled, encouraging employees not to print out emails unneccesarily and mounting a switch-off campaign to raise employees’ awareness to turn off all equipment when it’s not being used. We’re also working towards online royalty statements.
'Live Earth did switch on the hypothetical lightbulb'
No matter how you take your green pill, cynically or concerned, there are ways to make a difference, however small it may seem. In 2005 Friends of the Earth launched The Big Ask climate campaign which helps people ask the Government to take action on climate change. A number of PRS members have joined the campaign including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Badly Drawn Boy and James Blunt. Or join ‘I Count’, the campaign of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition of more than 50 organisations who are calling for the government to work for an international agreement to cut climate pollution and cut the UK’s emissions by at least three per cent year on year. The Kaiser Chiefs signed up at Glastonbury as did Billy Bragg and The Klaxons. Artists can consider carbon offsetting or just start recycling their music - there are many ways to spin the world round to a greener way of thinking.
Whereas for so long the only way of recycling music was via the sample or the cover version, it’s now possible to compost those compositions. As a Save Our Planet T-shirt-clad KT Tunstall put it on the New York Live Earth stage: ‘We’ve had our technological revolution, we’ve had our industrial revolution, now let us have our emotional-awareness revolution!’
www.juliesbicycle.com
www.thebigask.com
www.apeuk.org
www.carbontrust.co.uk
www.bestival.net