CLEANING UP THE MUSIC INDUSTRY Issue #32

Record labels, musicians, and festival producers show how putting their energy into going green not only benefits the environment but the bottom line profits too

By Laura Leebove
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

RECORD COMPANIES EAGER TO BE LABELED 'GREEN'
In mid-April, the Smog Veil Records building doesn’t look much different from any other construction project. Blue duct tape holds up clear plastic tarp in the front windows, cardboard boxes are piled in the middle of the floor, and a Port-a-Pottie stands on the front porch. When the building is completed in July 2007, it still might look like any other place in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood — until you see the wind turbines and 30 solar panels on the roof. The environmentally conscious founders of Smog Veil, Frank and Lisa Mauceri, hope the panels and turbines — along with geothermal heating and cooling — will provide most of the building’s energy.

When construction began in May 2006, wind turbines were prohibited in Chicago. Frank Mauceri went to the Chicago City Council to propose a change in the zoning code, and the ordinance passed after about three months. In making a sustainable place to live and work (the Mauceris will live on the second floor of the 5,100 square-foot building), Mauceri said he wants Smog Veil to be an example in the music industry of “certainly not only a sustainable business, but a more profitable business that is friendly to the environment.” He said that because of multiple greening efforts, the company eventually will save money on supplies, energy bills, and album packaging.

The Mauceris are among many who are trying to clean up the music industry by going “green” and being friendly to the environment, but it doesn’t stop at their workspace.

In addition to the building construction, Smog Veil will be eco-friendly in other ways, one of the biggest being album packaging. Since the beginning of 2007, Smog Veil has eliminated plastic jewel cases by selling all new releases in either Digipaks — folded cardboard with a plastic tray glued inside — or in cardboard sleeves. The label also will offer albums exclusively as digital downloads. “Traditionally the record business is not a very green business,” Mauceri said. “I’m quite disturbed by what’s going on with the war for oil and global warming and the destruction of our natural resources and our environment.”

Sub Pop Records took a different approach by working with environmental group Bonneville Environmental Foundation to offset — or counterbalance — the company’s energy use. The Portland, Oregon, foundation calculated the amount of energy the record company uses in a year, then how much money it would cost to produce the same amount of energy using renewable resources, such as solar and wind power. Through Bonneville, Sub Pop purchased “Green Tags” — also known as renewable energy credits — to replace the same amount of energy the company used, creating a sort of extra energy bill to pay in addition to its usual utilities in order to try to replace the resources it used.

“We’re still using the same amount of carbon-producing energy,” said Andrew Sullivan, who works in new media at Sub Pop, “but simultaneously buying renewable energy that’s not producing any carbon.” Sullivan said the money funds wind or solar farms mostly in eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. He said the idea came about after Sub Pop artist Kelley Stoltz purchased enough Green Tags to offset the energy utilized from the recording of his 2006 album, Below the Branches.

The Seattle label’s art director, Dusty Summers, said as part of Sub Pop’s charity program, the label donated to a rain forest in Madagascar through the Makira Forest Project. The project’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions by preserving the rain forest. The trees in this area of the rain forest will absorb enough carbon dioxide to offset one year of Sub Pop’s carbon emissions from employee travel and bands touring, Summers said. At the same time, the trees will produce more oxygen.

Aside from energy use, Sub Pop has changed the packaging for promotional copies of albums sent out to the media to recyclable paper instead of plastic jewel cases. “Most of the people I work with ... are pretty progressively thinking about the way that the environment is being affected,” Sullivan said. “We all have this opportunity [to be environmentally friendly], so why not take advantage of it?”

On a larger scale, Warner Music Group has taken steps to lessen its environmental impact. In fact, the company put Office Depot’s recycling bins on backorder after purchasing the entire U.S. inventory of them in order for every office in the company’s headquarters to have one, said Mike Jbara, executive vice president and chief operating officer of WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic) Corp., Warner Music Group’s U.S. sales and marketing company. WMG is in its third year of an environmental program advised by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We are going after our packaging,” Jbara said. “Paper ends up being a big part of the music industry. We want to make sure that we use paper responsibly.” As far as packaging goes, Jbara said all CD jackets include post-consumer fiber paper, instead of paper from virgin woods. While the company still uses plastic jewel cases, Jbara said WMG is working aggressively with the Natural Resources Defense Council to find post-consumer plastics with the same clarity as what is currently used. “The industry will get there to have perfectly clear plastics in time,” he said. “[It’s] just not there yet.”

To better manage paper waste, each employee in all U.S. Warner offices has a personal recycling bin, which employees empty out into a common recycling area. “[Our] employees are really turned on and conscious about it as well,” Jbara said of the recycling initiative. “From the top down, this is a particular area of great interest and value.” He said CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. spends a lot of time thinking about environmental impact as a company and is very hands-on in the program.

The next big part of Warner’s project will be reducing and offsetting carbon emissions. Jbara said that from the end of 2006 through spring of 2007, the company calculated the carbon dioxide emissions of its corporate offices to be able to offset them. In addition, rock band Guster, which has released albums on subsidiaries of Warner Bros., has worked with WMG to offset its entire music catalogue. And similar to this year’s Grammy Awards, all WMG corporate events will be carbon-neutral. Eventually, Jbara said, the offsetting could be extended to employees’ commute to work, although that is still in the works.

ON THE ROAD: MUSICIANS SET UP EARTH-FRIENDLY TOURS
There are plenty of musicians who are environmentally conscious, but that doesn’t mean they have the resources to be eco-friendly while trekking across the country. That’s where organizations like Music Matters and Reverb — groups committed to keeping bands’ tours green and reducing their environmental impact on the road — come in.

Wren Aigaki-Lander, director of enviro music programs for Minnesota-based Music Matters, said the group gets calls daily about tour help. “It’s really amazing, really great to see that interest,” she said. Music Matters, originally a nonprofit organization called Concerts for the Environment, has staff all over the country to advise musicians during their tours.

Aigaki-Lander said musicians are able to influence change because they have a unique platform available for reaching many people at once. “[Musicians] have a great effect on the public consciousness,” she said, using Bono, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, and Bruce Springsteen as examples. “Fans will follow the artists’ leads.” Aigaki-Lander said musicians are realizing how they’re affecting the environment through touring, so they use that as “an opportunity to take their own positive steps to reduce their environmental impact.”

A new project through Music Matters is Sustainable Minded Artists Recording and Touring, or SMART, which recently launched at joinsmart.org. SMART provides touring bands with a database of information about carbon-dioxide emissions reduction and offsetting, energy efficiency, waste reduction and recycling, sourcing of sustainable goods and services, and fan communications. After SMART has been up and running for a while, music venues can choose to get “SMART certified,” so bands know which places are the most eco-friendly. Through SMART, touring bands can get information about where to find biodiesel on the road, where to order T-shirts made from organic cotton, and other ways to green the tour.

A common step taken while touring is carbon offsetting — similar to what Sub Pop did — by calculating the energy used on a tour, including traveling and venue costs. “It’s funding something else that’s reducing carbon emissions,” Aigaki-Lander said. Music Matters also campaigns with socially responsible companies like Clif Bar and Ben & Jerry’s. Similar to Music Matters and Reverb, Clif GreenNotes has gone on tour with bands including Gomez and Guster and have teamed up with Bonnaroo and other fests to set up tents that raise awareness about environmental issues.

Clif Bar works directly with Reverb, which began in 2004 when Lauren Sullivan and her husband, Guster guitarist-vocalist Adam Gardner, wanted to “combine our two worlds,” Sullivan said — she coming from the environmental side, and he from the music side. The couple was looking for “good environmental things to happen in the music realm.” Meanwhile, Bonnie Raitt was on her Green Highway tour, where she used biodiesel to fuel her tour bus, purchased carbon offsets, and made an “eco-village” of environmental organizations to educate concertgoers. “It was all the stuff and then some in terms of what we had thought about,” Sullivan said. Bonnie Raitt agreed to sponsor Sullivan and Gardner’s new organization, and Reverb took off.

The couple contacted Barenaked Ladies guitarist-vocalist Steven Page and “chased their tour around the country in a van,” Sullivan said. As a way for the fans to get involved, stickers were sold for $5 at each show. The profit was given to NativeEnergy — a renewable energy company working with Reverb — to offset the carbon fans used to travel to the show. “It gets [the fans] aware of how economical and feasible it is,” Sullivan said. “[Maybe] they’ll think about carpooling next time.” Reverb also does tour offsets, which Sullivan said usually ranges from $40 to $400, depending on the venue and location.

FESTIVALS
Four days of camping out in a field in the middle of nowhere — also known as Manchester, Tennessee — sounds pretty green, right? It’s definitely green if you’re talking about Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, a four-day celebration of music, arts, film and comedy. Greening isn’t a new issue for Superfly Productions, the show’s production company — in previous years for Bonnaroo it has partnered with environmental organizations such as the National Resources Defense Council to make the festival eco-friendly, said Richard Goodstone, co-founder of Superfly.

“In general, [the environment is] morally and philosophically a big issue to us,” Goodstone said. “We evaluate what we do in our business practices in general to just be as environmentally aware as possible.” Upon entering the festival campgrounds, people are given two plastic bags — one for garbage and one for recyclables, he said. There is also a team of people dedicated to making sure recyclables are separated. Aside from recycling, Goodstone said last year the festival used 30,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel, offset the weekend’s carbon emissions, had a solar-powered stage, and utilized biodegradable cups, plates, and cutlery.

Unlike previous years, Lollapalooza — the three-day music fest that recently made Chicago’s Grant Park its permanent home until at least 2011 — also will feature a solar stage, along with other efforts to be more environmentally friendly. The festival will feature new lines of merchandise made either from sustainable or organic products, along with recycled toilet paper and Green Street, an area new to the festival this year. Green Street will serve as a place for fans to learn about how to make a difference in the environment and will feature nonprofit organizations, interactive fan activities, and an organic farmers’ market.

Lollapalooza, which draws daily crowds of more than 60,000 people, will be carbon neutral — “working on both sides to lessen our impact,” said Shanda Sansing, patron services manager for C3 Presents, the company producing the festival. “[We’re trying to] look at alternative ways of doing things.” With all of the cans and plastic drink cups, concertgoers can make an impact and win festival swag by collecting recyclables, an incentive also used last year.

“It’s like this — we feel like there’s no silver bullet, no one thing we can do,” Sansing said. “[We’re going to] look at every aspect of the festival and figure out how that little bit can be changed. All these little steps will add up to make a great impact.”