News roundup

Lest you think that all I care about is Langerado, here is a roundup of newsworthy events that have crossed my desk recently.

The Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario, (that's the great white north for all you geographically impaired Americans) goes where other festivals dare not tread: free drinking water, reusable beer mugs, and, no foolin', they will even wash your dishes for you to keep you from using paper plates.

Scotland's T in the Park festival makes an unsubstantiated claim to be the world's largest carbon neutral event. The festival will also be selling combined bus/festival tickets, something I'd like to see more of at US festivals.

Australia's festivals join up for a "summer of sustainability." Details, announced only through a myspace blog, are limited, but so far Falls Festival, Big Day Out, St Jeromes Laneway and Golden Plains have all joined on to the effort. Since the festival season has just wrapped up down under, I presume that this is an effort for summer 08-09 (sounds kinda strange, doesn't it?).

Also on the down-under tip, some old news that I'd meant to report on long ago, but never got around to. The Peats Ridge Festival, widely regarded as the most eco-friendly festival in the world, was unfortunately cancelled this time around due to massive floods. Enthusiastic Al Glore fans point fingers.

(update: the amazing venues and December Sunshine have now officially put Golden Plains and Peats Ridge as the two festivals I most want to attend but will never be able to afford airfare for. Check out the setup for the lucky 7500 festival-goers at GP. Woodstock, it ain't!)

Speaking of enthusiastic fans, the NY Times gets all fan-boy about Jack Johnson, waxing poetic about both his lyrics and his green creds. To his credit, Johnson has the decency to note that his music is "mellow to the point of annoying."

Speaking of eco-stoners, green-leaning festival Bonnaroo announced their lineup not long ago. Johnson will be headlining this year, with fellow green scenester Willie Nelson also on the bill. Hot tip if you're headed to Bonnaroo this year: do not miss Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. I don't know how green she is, but her voice is pure gold and her moves are red-hot. Run don't walk, kiddies, because between her set and My Morning Jacket, the tickets have already paid for themselves.

And on that note, take it away, Sharon!

Green Apple festival expands to 8 cities

Ripped straight out of Reuters for your reading pleasure, here's some news that should make Earth Day a little more fun this year.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The 2008 Green Apple Festival won't "change the world," Green Apple founder/executive producer Peter Shapiro says, but this year's third installment of the event will expand from three locations to eight U.S. city parks for simultaneous outdoor festivals on April 20.

In an effort to raise the profile of Earth Day (April 22), producers of the Green Apple Festival, in collaboration with the Earth Day Network and presenting sponsor Chase, will set up free concerts in New York (Central Park), Washington, D.C. (the National Mall), Chicago (Lincoln Park Zoo), Miami (Bicentennial Park), Denver (City Park), Dallas (Fair Park), San Francisco (Golden Gate Park) and Los Angeles (Santa Monica Pier).

No artists have yet been confirmed, but "we're looking to have as an eclectic lineup as we can," Shapiro says, adding that about four "big acts" will perform in each city.

During the two days before the festival, approximately 150 music clubs across the country will be enlisted to help spread the message of environmental awareness. Each venue will be encouraged to use environmentally friendly supplies, such as biodegradable cleaning materials and recycled napkins and paper towels. In addition, "We're going to encourage the talent at all of these shows to acknowledge from the stage that it's Earth Day," says Shapiro, who owned the now-closed environmentally focused New York venue Wetlands Preserve. "We'll also ask the bands to make a contribution to an environmentally oriented charity of their choice."

With such acts as Bob Weir & Ratdog, the Decemberists, Taylor Hicks, Stephen Marley and Kaiser Chiefs, last year's festival, billed as the largest carbon-neutral event of its kind, took place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Shapiro says the shows drew 15,000, 40,000 and 25,000 people, respectively. He hopes the 2008 fest will draw 500,000 concertgoers across the board.

"What's exciting is that Green Apple will be the biggest Earth Day event in the country," he says.

Reuters/Billboard

Going to Langerado!

So thanks to my recent interview with Kelly Viau, I was able to score myself a press pass to Langerado, on the condition that I do a little pre-show publicity. I'm so OK with quid pro quo (outside of my government day job, natch), it's not even funny. But my interview recently pretty much exhausted the green agenda at Langerado, so I think I'll put up a couple of posts between now and March 6 investigating which of the many bands performing are so green it hurts and which ones just want your money. And when I get back, after I take a shower and detox my liver, I'll report on just how successful the greening effort really was.

Is there a band in the lineup you want me to dig up some dirt on? Hit me up in the comments. Now, here's a little (video) story about three young brothers you know so well:

The Greening of JamCruise and Langerado: A behind-the-scenes interview

I was lucky enough to spend an hour with Kelly Viau, Bryan Birch, John Long, and Lucas Erickson for an interview earlier today. Kelly works for two separate companies that share several employees. Not only does she handle sponsorships for Cloud 9 Adventures, the production company behind JamCruise and Caribbean Holidaze, but she also works for Langerado, the rapidly growing music festival coming up next month at Big Cypress Seminole Reservation outside of Fort Lauderdale.

John, Bryan, and Lucas are the three founders of ZeroHero Events, an event greening service based in Fort Collins, CO, that is helping to green both Jam Cruise and Langerado. When they're not greening other people's festivals, they're dreaming up ways to make their own festival greener. Now in its 9th year, the Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair is expected to draw 10,000 people and 150 vendors this summer, and the ZeroHero crew is working hard to draw a few big-name bands to the event this September. Bryan handles the education component of ZeroHero's events, John is the renewable energy guru and founder of Blue Sun Biodiesel, and Lucas works to make sure mountains of waste aren't left behind.

An hour wasn't nearly enough time for me to ask all the pressing questions I had about how the team has tackled the big job of greening these festivals, but we gave it our best shot. Our conversation ranged from the best species of mustard to use for sustainable biodiesel production to the pressing need for condoms on a tiny tropical island off the coast of Honduras. Enjoy!

Jason Turgeon: Tell me about the relationship between ZeroHero and Kelly's work.

Bryan Birch: We came on almost a year ago to help reach new heights by improving to improve the practices of the cruise ship, which was a really interesting venture. We further developed a recycling program and focused on using more sustainable products. The Jam Cruise “Leaving a Positive Legacy Program” was a huge success this year. We offloaded three pallets of school supplies for school kids in Roatan and condoms for an AIDS clinic there working with Trojan as a sponsor. Kelly helped out with pulling sponsors like Trojan in. We're trying to develop a positive legacy with JamCruise. That's also an important part of the process for us in all our work. In festivals, there's an incredible wealth of talent and resources both from artists and passengers. There's a very conscious crowd in the scene, and everyone is always willing to help out.

Kelly Viau: The greening program on JamCruise has been part of the event since the first year, and is led by the vision of Ann Kenworthy. [note: the most recent event was JamCruise 6]. For a number of years we worked with Rock the Earth. This past year we made the move to bring in ZeroHero to bring some of these programs to the next level. It's something that's sort of developed over the last six years.

Lucas Erickson: It's an evolution, it's a process, where every year we try to continue to improve what's taken place next year.

JT: How does your choice of a particular ship or cruise line impact your ability to green the JamCruise event each year?

BB: This year with MSC, they valued us a customer so much that they opened up support for us for the 5 day cruise. They gave us a great deal of access, and we had a lot of support from the cruise staff.

JT: Do you think what you're doing is carrying over to other cruises after your event is done?

KV: I think it absolutely impacts the way they approach other cruises. This will be our fourth year with MSC. We're starting to see littlle changes throughout their other cruises. They're not huge steps for people like us that think about this every day, but they're big steps for an organization that doesn't. A little bit really goes a long way. We're now starting to see at least an open conversation on using biodiesel on cruise ships.

JT: Moving on to Langerado, now that you're in Big Cypress, what do you have planned from a green perspective?

BB: We have a set of messages to help improve the event. With each message there will be a program associated with it. The ZeroHero philosophy is to help create an event that becomes green by having aware attendees. Different programs that we're working with specifically are the Leave no Trace program working with Clean Vibes, and Sustainable Product Sourcing, or SPS. Every year it gets easier. One of the biggest challenges to event greening is to get everyone on the same page.

Renewable energy is a huge program aspect this year. Every light tower, every stage, and all the generators will be powered by biodiesel. It's available to artists as well. We're also involved in fueling at Lollapalooza.

JT: Do you see artists asking for access to biodiesel?

John Long: Definitely. For some artists its pretty important, but access has always been an issue. Each year access grows for artists to be able to fill up on biodiesel. It's a real challenge to find, but pump growth and retail locations are expanding. It's becoming a lot more viable for artists and attendees to expect biodiesel at the festivals.

JT: Will you use biodiesel blends or B100?

JL: Basically we've gotten b20 approved for everything--forklifts, light towers, generators. Some of the artists are very interested in running b100 or something in between for their tour buses.

LE: We'll also be offsetting all the carbon emissions from production as well as all the trucks and buses that artists are bringing. We're partnering with an organization called Trees, Water, & People to help with offsetting. And Langerado already has an ongoing partnership with Native Energy for ticket buyers to offset part of their emissions for travel to the festival.

JT: how does Trees, Water, & People work?

LE: They support self-sustaining tree nurseries in Central America. They employ local people to keep those going, and do a good job of making sure that all the trees that they plant are going to grow up to be a mature tree. They also have a another program that's really good called the stoves program. They go into these very low income communities in Honduras and Nicaragua. They've developed these stoves that take the place of the sort of open campfires that people were cooking over in their houses. A leading cause of death in women and children in these countries is respiratory health. They also offset carbon because they use so little wood to keep these going with little pieces of biomass like twigs and pine cones instead of going out and cutting down trees.

BB: One thing that Trees, Water, & People does is hook up their tree nurseries with their stove program. They have hardwoods and fruit trees which they count towards carbon offsetting, and they also have fast growing fuel wood softwoods that they do not. They won the Ashton Award for Climate Change. One thing that's important to us when we choose an offset program is that there is a lot of transparency. This improves social health as well as the environment.

LE: A very important part of that is the economic sustainability that they offer. We're very proud to be working with them.

JT: Do you tie each of these programs into the education component?

BB: That's right. We combine each one with the idea that simple is good. We'll do a series of simple messages that relate to the attendees that will tie into one of the programs at the event. It's a way that we can tie this into things that attendees can do.

LE: It all ties together into the ecovillage that we're setting up. We're bringing a lot of non-profits and for-profits that all have an ecological goal, plus some cool artwork and really interesting workshops.

KV: We call it Greenerado. There's going to be a stage in there, too. Were going to have the Spam Allstars, the School of Rock Allstars, Trevor Hall, Steel Train, Pete Francis of Dispatch, the Wood Brothers, and the Heavy Pets.

LE: The Wood Brothers are going to be there? That's awesome!

BB: We'll be spending a lot of time in that ecovillage. (laughing)

KV: Greenerado is in the heart of the festival, and metaphorically we do consider that to be the heart. What happens there rays out into the rest of the event.

BB: We'll do some positive legacy programs as well. We're still working out some details on what those will be. We'd like to leave a positive legacy with Big Cypress after Langerado is over. Through greening specifically, we'll try to foster that.

JT: Let me ask you to respond to some of the recent criticisms surrounding biodiesel and the use of monocultures and lots of chemical fertilizers to grow crops. Some people question whether or not that's the best way to reduce our use of fossil fuels.

BB: We feel that biofuels are imporant. They're an important transition to a sustainable economy. It's on a spectrum. There are some practices that are already there, and there are some that are along the way. That's where I feel that biofuels, including ethanol, are. There are a lot of biodiesel alternatives that are coming along right now.

JL: Blue sun biodiesel has been working on this for several years to find crops and methods that are fighting monoculture and high use of chemicals in agriculture as well as irrigation, since we're out in CO, essentially in a desert environment. We've been working for six years with canellina and canola, both plants in the mustard family, that are drought tolerant so that we can move away from soy and even worse, palm, where they are basically destroying the rain forest to grow these crops. It's going to take time, it's a transition now, and it's not perfect. We're using a lot of soy in the industry now, but it's better than using corn for ethanol.

The canola is a rotation crop for winter wheat. We're targeting winter wheat farmers in the western states to grow these mustard varieties that will improve the yield and reduce their water use. Some of the varieties will grow without any additional irrigation and with much less chemical input than are needed with corn and soy. Also, they're all non-GMO varieties that we're using.

LE: The future of algae is another feedstock that's very exciting.

JL: Algae is maybe 2-5 years out, but Blue Sun is very involved with several companies that are doing research on it. Jatropha is another very exciting crop, it's a dry land shrub that's native to Central America. You can grow it in Mexico and the oil can be converted to biodiesel and used here. It can't freeze, so we can't grow it in our backyard, but growing it in Mexico, it's closer to us from a transportation standpoint than the midwest. That crop gets 8-10 times more oil/acre than soybeans do. Some of the big oil companies are using it already.

JT: Like who?

JL: BP is growing plantations in Africa and India. There's not a whole lot of production in Central America yet. It takes 2 years for the plantation to mature. That 2 years is the only time that they need any irrigation. After that, the plant needs no water or chemical input, it grows like a weed. Basically it's a living fence, a six-foot high fence.

JT: Considering your new home is in Big Cypress, and the Big Cypress and Everglades areas are really suffering from a history of poor water management, are you going to focus at all on water at Langerado?

LE: As part of the Leaving a Positive Legacy Program, we will be trying to improve the everglades in some way. We're still working out how.

KV: We will do something positive with the greywater from the event. The uncontaminated water will be used for spraying on the roads to cut down on dust.

JT: I guess it's about time to wrap up. Before we finish, do you mind telling me who you're most excited about seeing at Langerado this year?

JL: I'm old school--I'm psyched for the Beastie Boys!

LE: I'm really excited about the Wood Brothers.

JT: I heard you mention them earlier. Who are they?

LE: It's Chris Wood from Martin, Medeski, and Wood, and his brother Oliver. I'm especially excited now that I know they'll be on the green stage. They're amazing, but not very many people know about them, because they're fairly new to the music scene.

KV: I'm most excited about the bands that I've never heard of, the unknowns and the up and comings. That's what I always like best, finding some new bands that I hadn't heard before and getting to know them.

JL: That's very diplomatic of you, Kelly.

LE: Kelly for President! (laughing)

And there you have it. I wish we'd had more time to spend on this interview, as this was a really knowledgeable bunch of people with some great ideas on greening events. Until next time, here's a little video of the soon-to-be-famous Wood Brothers doing their thing.

An Interview with Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult/Earthology

Craig Minowa is a busy man. When he's not working at his day job for the Organic Consumers Association, he's running his non-profit CD-packaging business and record label, Earthology and riding a tour bus to get to shows with his band, Cloud Cult. Long-time readers might remember that we linked to an interview of him over at the inestimable Grist about 9 months ago. But with his reputation as one of the greenest musicians around, I thought we should do another interview with him for our legions of fans (that's you!).

I caught up with Craig late last week over the phone from the very pleasant sounding farm in Northern Minnesota that serves as his Batcave, complete with geothermal heating and cooling and a recording studio built from recycled bits and pieces.

Jason Turgeon: Start out by telling me how you got into the intersection of music and environmentalism.

Craig Minowa: It started out academically. I was not sure whether to go into environmental science or music. I decided to go with environmental science. It seemed like a better way to get into the green scene. Eventually that evolved into Cloud Cult and Earthology.

JT: How did Earthology start?

CM: Earthology started as a method to find an environmentally friendly cd package in the early 90's. Out of necessity, I researched the industry and found out how we could replicate cd's ourselves in an environmentally friendly way. Eventually, we started doing it for other folks.

JT: Like who?
CM: There have been a lot of people. Some of the names you might recognize are Arlo Guthrie and Built To Spill for their Idaho Green album. We also do consulting for labels like Universal and rights orgs like ASCAP.

JT: Does it pay for itself?

CM: Earthology is not a moneymaker. It was built as a non-profit.

JT: What makes a CD packaged by Earthology different from a normal jewel box?

CM: In the original days, we used strictly recycled jewel cases that were donated by the thousands, collected from college campuses and individuals. People would buy CD's and put them in CD booklets and were looking for something to do with the jewel cases. We reused the ones that we could. The materials are all PVC and polycarbonate, so the unusable ones went to a landfill.

Then we branched off into looking for earth-friendly shrinkwrap. We now use LDPE, but we're branching off into corn-based cellulose. CD's in general are gradually getting into post-consumer waste. All of our printed products use vegetable based inks. More and more bands are interested in our 100% postconsumer recycled paper CD cases, although from a strictly ecological standpoint it's better to reuse a plastic case than use recycled paper. Pretty much the only thing that isn't environmentally friendly is the disc itself, which we're hoping will someday change.

JT: What else sets Earthology apart?

CM: Earthology itself is based on a farm, heated and cooled by geothermal waste. We also do things like figure out the amount of CO2 created by manufacturing and transport, etc., then we offset everything. And we plant 10 trees for every 1000 units sold.

JT: That must be a lot of trees. Do you have any idea how many?

CM: (laughing) It's a small forest by now. The trees are planted all over. We started at Earthology, planting the trees by ourselves, and then we moved into using non-profits like American Forests. It's tough to say how many we're responsible for, because we plant them in different areas and not all of the trees will survive.

JT: You also do work for the Organic Consumers Association. Tell me about your day job.

CM: I analyze new studies in different journals and put that into an easy to digest format for the common Joe and Jane out there. I focus on sustainable agriculture.

JT: And you're also a singer-songwriter with Cloud Cult. You must have a very patient boss to let you juggle all of this.

CM: Everything that I do is over the laptop and cell phone. On tour, I just do it in the van. We travel 6-8 hours a day between shows. It does mean that I don't get to rest as much in the van as I'd like.

JT: Tell me about the other members of the band. Have they been with you since the beginning, or is it a new group of people for each album and tour?

CM: A couple have stayed since the beginning, but we have had multiple bassists and violin players. The cello player and painters have been with us for a long time. The painters have been integrating themselves more musically, but predominantly focus on getting that piece of artwork finished in that 75 minute set. We auction off the art at the end of each set.

JT: You do a lot of driving. I know you use biodiesel, but there's a growing debate around the production of biofuels. What are your thoughts on this?

CM: Biodiesel is an ongoing study of its own. As we shift more towards biofuels, there is more of a debate about the agriculture behind biodiesel. With anything environmental, there is a constant struggle to make things better and making mistakes. It's the same thing with shows. You do a show, you try to do as much to make it environmentally friendly as possible, but 90% of the clubs don't have recycling.

JT: Have you been able to talk venues into doing more?

CM: It's starting to get to the point where we have a draw and get a bit more respect, but for the most part clubs don't want us telling them how to manage their venue.

JT: Are you the only one interested in green, or are the other members of the band involved?

CM: Connie, one of the painters, is my wife. For her day job, she does children's environmental health issues for indigenous people, so she's involved. The rest of the band are concerned about the environment, but not as much as we are.

JT: You do a lot of interviews. What's one thing you wish the media would discuss with you that they don't?

CM: There's still a stigma about being an environmental musician. When people read about it or hear about it, they assume you're a hippie jamband or going to be all preachy. It's actually the opposite. You can try an live your life environmentally and still be an average joe who's not wearing patchoulie. It's tiring to see reviewers who assume that we have 20-minute jams and who haven't listened to the cd. It's nice to see that start to change. Our audience is kind of the college indie-rock crowd, a lot of urban inner-city youth who were kind of cynical about what we were doing. They liked the music but they didn't care about the green stuff. That's changing, too.

JT: You say your audience is mostly urban inner-city college kids. Do you get any crossover into hip hop?

CM: We don't get much of the hip-hop audience. We do have a good variety of people coming to our shows, though. We have a lot of older people who end up coming to shows, sometimes full families. That seems to stem from the messaging behind the music. Connie and I lost our 2-year old son a few years ago. A lot of the music has stemmed from that grieving process. I think people with kids relate more to that.

JT: Filesharing is the most environmentally friendly way to distribute music. Pro or con?

CM: Digital music is the future of music and should be the future. In the early years we didn't mind the file-sharing. It's gotten to the point where we really feel it hit your pocketbook. Our last album release leaked about a month before it came out. It cost us thousands and thousands of dollars.

JT: Do you see it made up in tour revenues and t-shirts?

CM: Partially, but it's hard to say. It's my philosophy that if you listen to it a lot and you really like it, you should pay for it, but if you're just discovering it for the first time it's a good way to spread the word.


JT: What about the various proposals that have been floated to have voluntary music licensing for broadband users?

CM: I haven't heard of those. [JT describes the system.] That sounds interesting. It could work.

That wraps up the interview. Here's a very non-jamband-like video that clocks in at a mere 3:19 for the uninitiated.

MIDEM to give awards to 3 green festivals

I hadn't heard of MIDEM until this press release came along. From the looks of it, MIDEM is a bit like South by Southwest, only with a more international appeal. The 4-day event in Cannes, France, is in its 42nd year and claims that it will draw about 10,000 lucky participants later this month. Those attending will get lots of networking and the opportunity to pick from some 500 concerts. I'm jealous!

MIDEM, like everyone else in the free world, got the green bug this year. Besides taking steps to green the conference, it's also recognizing trailblazers who have already started to green large music events. I'm not sure how MIDEM picked these three, and I'm surprised that Peat's Ridge didn't make the cut (perhaps because this year's event was unfortunately canceled due to extreme rains). Never mind the methodology, these events certainly deserve the credit, and it's very heartening to see that the greening of the music movement is getting so mainstream.

So who's getting the awards?

• Daniel Rossellat, president, Paléo Festival Nyon (Switzerland)
• Henrik Rasmussen, general manager, Roskilde Festival (Denmark)
• Kevin Wall, founder & CEO, Live Earth (US/worldwide)

What, exactly, did these three folks do to deserve this? Well, according to the press release (lazy man's research):

In collaboration with other environmental groups, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore and his organization, The Alliance for Climate Protection, Live Earth set out strict “Green Guidelines” aimed at creating a “low-impact” event. Carbon emissions were substantially reduced and 81% of the 97 metric tons of waste collected was diverted from landfill sites via recycling and composting efforts. Advertising banners in South Africa, for example, were redistributed to rural townships to make sunshades for school playgrounds.

The Roskilde Festival Society is the largest Northern European music festival, exceeding the population of the fifth largest Danish city and producing the equivalent in waste. Some of their environmental policies date back to 1994, making the group one of the pioneers of the greener festival. All beverages are served in plastic mugs with 97% of the mugs being returned to recycling deposit points. The waste is sorted into 13 different categories and all organic materials are composted and used to refertilise the site. All profits from the festival are then donated directly to humanitarian causes.

The Paléo Festival Nyon is powered by a single green energy source, ‘vivonatur’, which is generated using 100% sustainable wind and water energy from the Swiss Alps. Powering one of the largest open-air festivals in Europe with green energy - over 225,000 festival-goers over a six day period - is a monumental achievement in itself. Paléo Festival Nyon has already won numerous accolades including the Nice Future 2006 prize and in 2007 the ‘Green ’n’ Clean’ title awarded by the organization of European festivals, Yourope. Under its slogan, ‘Respect the Environment’, Paléo also encourages people to sort their rubbish and take advantage of public transport.

Sounds pretty cool. Perhaps SXSW or someone else will start giving out similar awards to US-based musicians/venues/events.

And by the way, Radiohead is playing at Roskilde this year, so if any rich journalism-lovers out there want to sponsor my flight and event ticket, I'd love to go, um...research the greenness of this event. Here's Radiohead playing their most recent album, live!

Willie Nelson's Biowillie biodiesel

Looking over at the upcoming concert list on the right, I see Willie Nelson's name. One of the bigger regrets of my concert career is that I haven't seen him yet. I had hoped to at Bonaroo '04, but he pulled out due to health problems (although he was ably replaced by Steve Winwood, who was frankly stunning).

It's pretty hard not to like Willie. Between the pot smoking, the tax dodging, the charitable concerts, and the forward thinking views he presents to a fan base that isn't known for being so forward thinking, he represents a complex human face in a sea of two-dimensional acts. I've written before about FarmAid's sustainable food practices and how they could and should be a model for all other large festivals. He's also well-known for his love of biodiesel, and over the last couple of years he's gone and started his own line of the stuff, under the brand name Biowillie. He's even starting Willie's Place, a truck stop in Texas, to sell the stuff.

Biodiesel, ethanol, and other biofuels shouldn't be viewed as any kind of a panacea, no matter what Willie tells you. They don't do a thing to improve vehicle efficiency, they're typically mixed with fossil fuels, they usually rely on petroleum-based fertilizer, they do nothing to break the bounds of a continued corporate monoculture, and they are linked to significant water quality issues (PDF link). But all that aside, supporting biofuels as one piece of the solution to fixing our energy woes is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. I'd rather see a tour bus running on biofuels and supporting family farmers than a tour bus running on fossil fuels and supporting ExxonMobil.

For some reason, I can't get YouTube to embed on this post, but here's a clip of Willie on NPR talking about the reasons he got into biodiesel (his wife talked him into it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7LlsahCiLs

Toronto Gets a Green Music Venue

Last month I read an article in the Globe and Mail [link to original article (subscribers only), link to repost] about a former church that's being converted into Canada's first LEED-Gold music venue. Sounds like it's going to be a great place to catch a live show!

Green highlights--beyond reusing a building, which is a great place to start--include buying used doors and windows from a salvage company, but the article doesn't go into much detail about other green features and I couldn't find out much more from a good bit of google searching. Still, it sounds like the developer, a 70-year old man who must be great fun at cocktail parties, gets the green thing. He's also proposing a green condo building and has greened his other event locations in various ways.

It's great to see venue owners starting to come around. Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this, but I've heard through the grapevine that Live Nation has jumped on the green train and Radio City recently made some green overtures, so hopefully soon we'll see a whole slew of green venues coming our way.

If you live in Toronto, swing by the church and leave some more info (or a link to pictures!) in the comments.

Got a question for the Jamcruise/Langerado folks? Let us know!

On December 20, I'll be interviewing Kelly Viau from Jamcruise and John Long from Zero Hero Events about the greening of Jamcruise and Langerado. If you've got a burning question you want answered, let me know by posting it in the comments.

An interview with Shanda Sansing of C3 Presents

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending more than an hour on the phone with Shanda Sansing, the person in charge of patron services and event greening for C3 Presents. You might not have heard of C3 Presents, but you definitely know their products. C3 is the production company behind Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits (ACL), the Big State country music festival, and one-half of the newly announced Vineland festival to be held in NJ next August.

Shanda is the driving force behind the greening of C3's events, but she's got the support of company management and Lollapalooza founder Perry Ferrell. This support has shown up in the recent greening initiatives at Lollapalooza, ACL, and to some extent at Big State. The company is actively looking to make 2008's events even greener. In our wide-ranging discussion, we talked about everything from the difficulties of using biodiesel to getting the audience to wash other people's dishes and how to best serve a plate of hot barbecue to a judge.

Perhaps the most exciting news on the greening front will come out of Vineland. Live Nation and C3 are teaming up with Festival Republic, the production company behind the UK's Glastonbury festival, perhaps the most successful festival in the world, to put on this event. Glastonbury has a long history of working towards a more just and sustainable world and has taken many steps to green its festivals over the years. Hopefully when we put the two together, we'll see something that will rival Peats Ridge in Australia in terms of its green credentials and positive social impact.

One thing that really jumped out at me from this interview was just how much work goes into greening these events. It is still far easier for someone putting on a festival do go about doing things business as usual. Greening a festival that's attended by 225,000 people is a huge task, one that requires not just money but a tremendous amount of time and energy. If you're a festival goer, make sure you take the time to thank the organizers and the volunteers who help make these shows happen as sustainably as possible.

Jason Turgeon: How did you end up involved in the greening efforts at C3?

Shanda Sansing: I manage the volunteer program and access program for people with disabilities. Part of volunteer program has always been recycling, so it was an extension of that work. It also happens that I'm very interested in greening, so this was a natural fit.

JT: You got a lot of good press for your greening campaign at Lollapalooza this year. Did you do the same thing for ACL? What are your plans for Vineland?

SS: We did the same sort of things for ACL as for Lollapalooza, there just wasn't as much of a media focus. It's too soon to know what we'll do with Vineland, but I assume that we'll have the same focus. Really and truly, the stuff we did was a matter of stepping back and taking a look at how we could better produce our events. Anybody could take these actions.

JT: What are some of the challenges you've had trying to green the festivals?

SS: One of the hardest things has been dealing with waste. You have to have control over everything that comes on to the site to ensure that you can dispose of it properly.

JT: Speaking of waste, did you use compostable cups at these events?

SS: We would really have liked to use compostable cups, even though they would cost us about four cents a cup, but a beer sponsor will normally give us non-recyclable #6 cups for free. But we heard from New Belgium beer that some of the compostable cups they were using were melting in the heat. All of our events our held in the hottest part of the summer, so we couldn't take that chance. There are also disposal issues. Even with a good staff of volunteers at all the waste stations directing people how to dispose of things properly, it can get very confusing.

But Blackstone Winery used compostable cups for their wine and had no problems. We've heard that some people store the cups with the beer kegs in refrigerated storage, although that can create a logistical issue when we have many beer stations. So we're going to take another look at these cups in the future.

Instead of using compostable cups, we had recycling incentives at Lollapalooza and ACL. We served beer out of 2 kinds of cups, #1 and #5. Number 1 is the less expensive disposable cup you're used to, and #5 is the kind of white souvenir cup that you see at football stadiums. We got people to collect stacks of cups and bring them to us for t-shirts and other prizes. The #5 cups got sleeved in a plastic sheath that had printed directions which asked people to take the cups home and wash them and reuse them. We were handing people stacks of dirty cups and we couldn't keep them in stock. People loved them. It was fun. Until it happened, I didn't know whether it would work or not.

JT: Wow, you actually got festival-goers to do someone else's dirty dishes. Aside from the cups, did you have a composting program at any of this year's events?

SS: We opted not to compost at Lollapalooza because the closest facility that could take food waste was in Wisconsin and it couldn't be integrated into regular waste management system. We have been working with a Chicago-based composting entity to build more capacity. We will be looking at that in the future. There are other issues with composting. It must be staffed, and you can't have any meat, or grease, or cheese mixed in. At the very least, we might be able to do it backstage. It is easier to do with caterers. Then we could have as few as 3 stations.

JT: There is a growing movement to get people away from bottled water and into reusable bottles like Nalgenes. Are you looking at doing anything like that?

SS: The problem with the hard plastic water bottles is that they can be used as a weapon, so there is a security concern. It was a big struggle even to get people to be allowed to bring in their own Nalgenes. So for now, we don't have a good solution to that problem.

JT: Did you use biodiesel at your festivals this summer?

SS: We use Blue Sun biofuels. We started this process a couple of years ago. There was a big learning curve. Many of the vendors' generators would have had their warranties negated by biofuels, but recent industry changes have permitted B20 mix, so we now use B20. We also use as much shore power as possible.

JT: How about solar-powered stages? I know that Sustainable Waves is also located in Austin.

SS: We have not done anything with solar stages, but we have talked to Sustainable Waves. Their stages are not large enough for even the smallest stage we use--not even the kids area at ACL or Lollapalooza. The biggest stage is 16 x 24. But hopefully someday we'll get to a point where we can use a solar stage.

JT: What about your water and wastewater use and treatment at the festivals? Do you reuse any of the greywater or do anything else special?

SS: I have a strong interest in these issues because when I was a peace corps volunteer I built rainwater catchment systems in the Dominican Republic. The village I was working in had a irrigation canal, but we had to hike a mile to get clean drinking water. We do as much as we can at the festivals. The ACL production area is hooked into city water. Austin does not allow graywater reuse, because there are worries about contaminating the groundwater table. We are obligated to collect gray and black water from our vendors, as well as grease. Grease is collected by outside vendors for reuse. We still use regular portolets. We're open to anything that can help us manage our water and wastewater use.

JT: This year you held Big State, your first camping festival and your first strictly country music festival. Did you put the same amount of work into greening this festival?

SS: We did a lot of stuff behind the scenes. It was a great festival. It was in the middle of an oval race track, and we had a car race each day. We also had things like a barbecue competition. People loved it and we had a great time, but with things like a barbecue competition and car races, it was difficult to really make any big claims about being green.

One of the hardest things was the barbecue. People come to compete and they spend hundreds of dollars to be there. The way these things work is that at the last minute, everyone puts their food on styrofoam and they rush it up to the judges because they want the food to be as hot as possible. We tried as hard as we could, but we could not find a good alternative to styrofoam that would keep the judges and contestants happy, so we had to go with styrofoam plates for the competition.

There were some other things that we wanted to do but we couldn't because the festival was in Bryan College Station, a small town about 2 hours outside of Houston. There were no facilities that could offer us composting or biodiesel, for instance. But we did as much as we could. We had basic recycling. All of the beer was served in cans, which made it easier to recycle. We did carbon offsets and had a display area with greening info for the patrons.

JT: Do you talk to other production companies about what they do to green their events?

SS: Sure, we're generally on pretty good terms. It's like the corner with four car dealerships. They're competing, but they also help each other out by being there and drawing more people to the area. We've talked a little bit with the folks who run South by Southwest, but with 150 venues, it's very hard for them to manage this kind of thing. We've talked to the folks at Bonnaroo. They helped us out with the biodiesel, told us about their experiences with some of the generators shutting down at first because the biodiesel is so much cleaner it was cleaning the deposits in the engines and clogging the filters. So now we have lots of extra filters on hand.

JT: What are some other things you do to green your events?

SS: We try to integrate it into everything we do. For instance, all of our volunteer shirts were organic cotton. We wanted to support these industries, the organic cotton, the bamboo shirts. And we have things like Green Street at Lollapalooza. Green Mountain Energy handles all of our offsets for us. We offset everything we do, including the office and all of our travel.

The Rock Center Goes Green

This is old news by now, but New York's Rockefeller Center, home of Radio City Music Hall (where moe. will be playing new year's eve, unfortunately without me in the audience), has gone all green for Christmas, according to just about everybody, including the ever-reliable Daily News.

So what does it mean for Rock Center to "go green?"

Well, efficient LED lights on the tree, for one thing. And NYC's largest solar private solar installation on the roof, which is good. And a thermal storage system that will make ice during off-peak nighttime hours, then use that ice to reduce the load on the building's air conditioners during the peak daytime hours. All good things, to be sure. But I have to ask...is cutting down a tree with a handsaw really that much greener than cutting down a tree with a chainsaw?

More on Carbon Negativity: Carbon Harmony

Somehow, I missed Sarah's posts on Carbon Negativity and "Double Carbon Neutrality." I've been meaning to post for a while now about an outfit called Carbon Harmony that is marketing itself as carbon negativity for the music industry. Carbon Harmony landed the contract to offset the Sasquatch Music Festival to 110% of the festival's emissions, which I wrote about briefly on my blog about green festivals. The company also claims to have offset 150% of its own CO2.

I'm reminded of the following scene (sadly unavailable on YouTube) in There's Something About Mary (courtesy of IMDB):

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
[Hitchhiker convulses]
Hitchhiker: No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Ted: That - good point.
Hitchhiker: 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
Ted: Why?
Hitchhiker: 'Cause you're f***in' fired!

Carbon Harmony and Fiji water are making some big claims, but at the end of the day we need to keep a couple of things in mind. First, there are different levels of offsets, and Carbon Harmony is merely buying RECs from the CCX (explained in my interview with Native Energy), not creating new alternative energy projects or going out and planting trees. In other words, the company acts as a financial middleman, helping clients assuage their guilt.

Second, to borrow from Cradle to Cradle, doing less bad is not the same as doing good. That's one of several reasons why I don't like offsets. It's hard for me to get excited about a company like Carbon Harmony that's out there one-upping the competition when they're not really getting to the root of the problem, which is that events like Sasquatch and companies like Fiji, no matter how well-meaning the people behind them are, are still running on fossil fuels in an unsustainable way. Going to "carbon negativity" doesn't change that. For-profit companies will respond best to market forces, which is why we need to get past voluntary--and expensive--offsetting and start making it more costly to burn fossil fuels for energy than it is to run on renewable resources. Everything else is just a shell game.

Quickie: Linkin Park responds to Green Criticism

Rebecca Carter over at the excellent Ecorazzi.com blog called out Linkin Park for saying the band was green but not providing any visible evidence at a recent show. Curiously enough, Mike Shinoda not only read the piece, but he wrote back with a polite response explaining his point of view. Civility on the internets! Involving a rock star and the press! And it's not even April 1! Read all the details here.

Green Music News Roundup

Some quick notes from the green music scene:

• As reported by Fox News (!) and The Daily Green, a group of musicians led by aging rockers Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Graham Nash are joining up to fight a federal loan guarantee provision for nuclear power that is messing up an otherwise decent energy bill. I'm neither here nor there on nuclear, preferring negawatts to megawatts, but the libertarian in me doesn't like big subsidies for big business. So rock on, Bonnie! To sign the petition and see a full list of artists against nuclear power, check out NukeFree.org.
• Via EcoRazzi, Guster's Adam Gardner headlined a hearing on biofuels in our nation's illustrious capitol. Adam's pretty deeply involved in the green music biz--look for an interview with him in the coming weeks if I can wrangle one.
• The Scotsman reports on a wind-up MP3 player. CNet has a good review, but at $350 for only 2gigs of storage, this one's not exactly going to fly off the shelves, but who knows, maybe Apple will be inspired to do it better.

Carbon Offsets and an interview with Native Energy's Kevin Hackett

This past weekend my boss sent me to the Clean Air-Cool Planet conference in Manchester, NH. Ordinarily, I'm loathe to give up my weekends for anything even remotely work-related (I am a government employee, after all), but this was actually pretty fun in a morbidly depressing sort of a way. Besides hearing that we have even less time than we thought until we lose all the fun places like Amsterdam, Key West and New Orleans (why are all the good spots so low?), I got to hear speeches from my boss at the regional level here at the EPA, his old boss Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the EPA, and several of the people who want to be her replacement's boss: Bill Richardson, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Huckabee. There was also some science, and a few good discussions on various topics related to global warming. I snuck out early on Friday afternoon so that I could catch game 1 of the Red Sox-Indians series (more important than global warming!), but at the expense of missing what I'm told was a very spirited discussion of CO2 offsets featuring George Hoguet of Native Energy.





While I missed seeing George speak there, I did catch his presentation the next day in a smaller session. Native Energy is the big name in offsets when it comes to music. The company offset Dave Matthews's entire touring schedule retroactively, handled the offsets for all of Live Earth, and has worked with many other big names from Bonnie Raitt to Jack Johnson. After the presentation, I cornered him and pressed him for more info on the company's work with the music industry. He passed me on to Kevin Hackett, Marketing Specialist.





Before I start, an introduction to carbon offsets is in order. The simplest explanation is that they are a way to compensate for the carbon dioxide you're responsible for when you drive, fly, or use fossil-fuel based electricity or heat. You give some money to a carbon offset program like Native Energy based on the amount of your CO2 you feel guilty about. The program takes the money does something that is supposed to either remove an equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (by planting trees, for instance) or replace a fossil-fuel burning power source (by adding wind power to the grid, for example). Native Energy takes the second approach. If you want more info, I recommend reading Grist's short and sweet description, visiting the Tuft Climate Institute's analysis of carbon offsets, or delving into Clean Air-Cool Planet's 44-page Consumer's Guide to Carbon Offsets (PDF).





There are any number of problems with carbon offsets, and I'm on the record as saying that I'd prefer people spent their carbon offset money elsewhere. As Ed Begley says in a quote I'm shamelessly stealing from Grist.org, ""[I]f you're going to drive a Hummer and buy carbon offsets, that's like getting drunk every night and getting into an AA meeting, throwing money in the basket, and leaving." More troublesome to me, having to pay extra for offsets perpetuates the notions that being carbon-neutral has to be both expensive and voluntary. But they are a first step to either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, both of which I support.





But despite my general opposition to carbon offsets, it's hard not to like Native Energy. They go out of their way to address their critics and work as hard as they can to actually do good for the environment. The company is one of only four that Tufts recommends of the 13 reviewed. Native Energy is also working on a new project with the Gold Standard group to make sure that its carbon offsets pass muster with even the most stringent critics. They're majority tribally owned and are working to give Native Americans a viable source of income besides casinos. And to top it all off, they're a bunch of music lovers from Vermont.



The process of offsetting is simple. First, you decide how many tons of CO2 you want to offset and buy the credits (currently $12/ton). Native Energy takes this money and uses it to help finance either a new wind farm on Native American land or a methane powered-project on a family farm. These projects deliver renewable energy to the grid, displacing energy from fossil fuel plants. Since the fossil fuel plants burn less fossil fuel, they emit less CO2, and you can tell your friends that you're carbon neutral. After this point, Native Energy could choose to sell your CO2 offsets on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), but instead it donates them to Clean Air-Cool Planet (CACP). CACP then retires the offsets, making sure they don't get double counted. For much more info, check this link.



And now, on to the interview:



Jason Turgeon: Tell me about the work Native Energy (NE) does with the music industry.

Kevin Hackett: Native Energy works with both Reverb and Music Matters on outreach. Both of them do a great job of reaching that youth market. Both take the position that they should help reduce emissions first.


JT: Do you see fans purchasing offsets?
KH: Yes, both through our standard programs for their homes and through things like stickers that have tons or pounds of offsets. But it's not a huge number of fans.


JT: Can you clarify the part of the process where you donate the offsets to CACP?

KH: When someone buys an offset, they can't really show it off to their friends. It's not tangible. We donate the rights to that offset to CACP so that it can't be resold or reused or double counted. Offsets and renewable energy credits (RECs) are traded on places like the CCX. Ours are taken out of that.


JT: Who owns the projects?

KH: It depends on whether it's on tribal land or a family farm. For wind projects, the tribe owns them. On family-farm methane projects, the farmers own them. We don't own the projects, we help finance them. We provide the last 20% of the funding. Our business model is to find projects that are on the cusp of being viable and provide that little push.



JT: What response do you have for people like Radiohead's Thom Yorke, who has said he doesn't like offsets?

KH: That's a statement that we get on a regular basis. Offsets are not the solution, they're part of a solution. Everyone we work with takes steps to reduce their emissions first. What they can't reduce, they offset. We stand by the projects that we work with. They are all truly additional projects that wouldn't happen without our funding. They're not up and running projects that are selling RECs on the CCX.


JT: You're famous for your work with Dave Matthews and Live Earth. Waht other acts have you worked with recently?

KH: Incubus, Martin Sexton Trio, Jon Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd, a lot of others.



JT: You work with Timberland, a company that is well known in the hip-hop community. Have you had any success working with hip-hop artists?

KH: No, but there's stuff coming down the pipe. We're open to working with anybody.



JT: Do you see bands rolling this into the ticket price?

KH: We've seen a lot of that. We see promotion companies doing this either as an opt-in or an opt-out.


JT: Native Energy is from Vermont. Did you work with Phish before they split up, or have you worked with any of the members on their solo tours?

KH: We haven't had any contact with them, but we're open to working with anyone.



JT: You're doing methane projects on family farms. Have you worked with Farm Aid?

KH: We have not worked with farm aid, but they would be a good fit.



JT: Is it easier to put up a windmill on tribal land than it was for Jon Fishman or Cape Wind?

KH: No, we still have to jump through all the hoops. Being majority tribal-owned certainly helps, but we have just as many hoops to jump through. It's all essentially federal land, so we have to deal with all the same regulations.



JT: What about NIMBY? Is it better on reservations?

KH: It's still an issue. In some ways, it might be worse.



JT: Are you working with anyone to certify your offsets?

KH: We haven't in the past, but the Owl Feather project will be our first gold-standard certified project. We're not doing anything differently than we would before. It's just a new bit of paperwork.


JT: What's on your ipod?

KH: Everything from Willie Nelson to Guster because we just went to the show, a little bit of hip-hop. I am a child of the eighties so there's some Ratt and Guns and Roses and Poison. I hope I didn't just turn off the jambase crowd. (laughing)
JT: No, no, it's cool, we're not all 19.



Thanks again to Kevin Hackett for taking the time out for this interview. Now here's some Ratt to take it home.

Hello, World!

Hi there! I'm Jason Turgeon, the newest addition to the Green Base blog team. I'm excited about the opportunity to write about music and the environment, but I figured I'd start out with an introduction first. So here's me in a nutshell:

I'm a former boat captain, a blogger, an advocate of free culture, a textbook revolutionary, a graduate of Northeastern University, a geologist, a boyfriend, a festival-goer, a geek, a hiker, a biker, a Bostonian, an employee of the EPA, a music lover, and a big huge Red Sox fan (even after last night's debacle). And one more thing. I'm a not-so-closeted low-down dirty treehugger. And in case you've been lost out in the rapidly-expanding desert, our little home planet's in trouble. Big trouble. And now is the time to act.

So here's the scoop. We've screwed up the planet to the point where environmentalism must now pervade everything we do, including the ways we make and listen to music. This is bigger than politics, bigger than terrorism, bigger than the Red Sox, bigger than George Bush or Vladimir Putin or the Buddhist monks in Burma or being a vegetarian or wind farms or even nuclear war. It's even bigger than Phish breaking up. In other words, freakin' enormous.

So with with the catastrophic changes that we might face, with the world literally falling apart around us and things about to get a hell of a lot worse, it can be easy to throw up our hands and bury ourselves in the music and just try to forget about it. After all, with a problem this big, there's nothing we can do, right? Um, no. Plenty of people are out there doing great things, and many of them are right here in the music scene. And while musicians aren't scientists or politicians or corporate CEOs, they can still have a tremendous positive impact. They can educate their fans, they can try out new things and share their experiences, they often have greater access to politicians than the man-on-the-street, and they can serve as role models.

My goal at this blog is not to dwell on all the negatives around us. We already know that things are in bad shape. I'm here to provide a little positive feedback and have a little fun. I'll discuss the things that musicians and the music industry as a whole are doing, and slap some wrists where it's necessary. I'll profile environmentally-minded musicians, make notes on trends in the industry, maybe even do a couple of interviews, and generally work to keep you updated on this stuff and let you know how you--as music fans--can go out and have a great time at shows without trashing the place. Stay tuned!

By the way, this weekend the Echo Project, one of the coolest fusions of music and environmentalism we've seen in a very long time, wraps up. I did a preview of this over on my other blog at melodytrip.com. Check it out if you're interested.

But enough of this envirotalk. Here's some girltalk to lift your spirits (I was at this show, it freakin' rocked!)