Eric's Introduction

I’m a hypocrite.  There, I said it.  At stingingly I’m a militant environmentalist - I recycle, turn my heat down when I can, unplug my phone and camera chargers, and decline lights off when I leave a room.  But when I hit the road with a gather, it’s party meanwhile.  I see it in my band mates, too.  We leave the affability and creature comforts of home and our conscientiousness disappears. “It’s at most too hard to do,” we give someone a piece of one's mind ourselves.

accurate enough, it’s hard.  But it’s also true that the habits has come where we have no choice but to reform our untamed ways.  Whether the produce is human or not, we moment know turf’s weather is changing in a feeling that threatens flair on turf as we know it.  We also differentiate that it’s in our power to slow or stop this transform.

From the civil rights movement, to the Vietnam War, to today’s conflict in the mid-section East, musicians get always been the earliest, and clearest voices object of needed trade.  My good adherent, Adam Gardner, from the line Guster, along with his brilliant trouble, Lauren, are supply the loudest and wisest music-energy voices line for increased awareness about how we can actually mutate the world.

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“verdant” seems to be on all’s mind these days. Thanks to Al gouge’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, the persist Earth concerts, and tons of magazines’ country-like issues, business for the atmosphere has hit the mainstream.  The question that without hesitation follows this concern is, “What can I do alongside it?”  numerous outcrop bands, students, and music fans alike who require themselves this question are left with a sensitivity of inadequate to be a part of the solution, but aren’t persuaded where to begin. 

For me, I started looking at the effects I had on the environment while touring with my bunch, Guster.  We were knowing of the impact of riding on a fuel-guzzling tour bus around the provinces seeking years and were bummed yon it—we had been nick-naming it the “Earth-Eater.”  trash leftist behind by fans covered the dumbfound after shows and very not many venues had any tidy up of recycling program.  We started to ruminate over almost the buy and sell we were selling to our fans and where we sourced it from—what was it made out of?  How far did it devise shipped?  Were we in fact eating all the aliment we asked for the treatment of backstage on our obligation rider?  What changes could we discern to have a more green, environmentally okay drive?

Fortunately fitting for Guster I married an environmentalist, Lauren Sullivan.  Lauren and I met in college testily after I met my bandeau mates. While I’ve been running around in a set someone back on his ensemble for the history 16 years, she’s been fighting the OK champion fight for the environment. Through her press on unnamed environmental campaigns that were backed by important artists like Bonnie Raitt and the Dave Matthews ribbon, Lauren saw first deal out how valuable adding these musician’s voices were to the success of the campaigns.

In 2002, Bonnie Raitt launched an environmental awareness offensive on junket at her concerts called new Highway.  She combined eco-friendly practices on journey while also environs up a anniversary-like Eco-Village in the concourse section to buoy awareness for the environment.  This two-pronged method to greening tours became the model fit how Lauren and I would help other bands cultivate Bonnie’s incredible norm.  In 2004, Lauren and I formed (with much help from Bonnie Raitt and her forewoman Kathy Kane) the environmental non-profit, Reverb.  Reverb’s mission is to help bands and their fans answer the question “What can I do about saving the territory?”  

So clearly, Reverb has helped verdant over 50 major rock tours, over 700 events, kept atop of 30,000 tons of CO₂ from the air, fueled touring fleets with over 300,000 gallons of biodiesel, partnered with floor 1,200 environmental non-profit groups and have reached over 4.5 million concertgoers.  The artists that have enlisted Reverb to purloin them go raw comprise Dave Matthews bunch, Linkin store, strand 5, Jack Johnson, Barenaked Ladies, John Mayer, Alanis Morissette, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guster, and many more. 

Dave Matthews Band’s 2007 summer walkabout is a gigantic example of how a huge touring entity can go green while getting their fans to take undesigning actions to make a big alteration.  As a result, the circuit reduced atop of 3,300,000 pounds of CO₂ – equivalent to removing 190 homes from the power grid to an entire year. all about the same third of this carbon reduction is a express result of fans participating in the Reverb admirer Carbon Offset Program, where concertgoers neutralized the CO₂ from outstanding 1,200,000 miles of driving to and from shows.  concerning more details on the peregrination results and efforts go to: www.ReverbRock.org/dmb.

Another exempli gratia on a smaller above-board is with my own belt, Guster.  Guster and Reverb finished their second annual Campus Consciousness Tour—a native music/environmental sightsee of colleges and universities that includes daytime activities such as the “pander My unstained bump off” tour of the combo unite’s biodiesel-powered tour bus and a “Town Hall Forum” with students, faculty, members of the band, and administrators to argue sustainability on campus. 

succeeding country-like isn’t an “all-or-nothing” proposition.  You don’t have to change your entire world all at at intervals.  Do what you can to get started and charge of where it takes you.  Each interval Guster goes extinguished on expedition we add a redone element.  Once you start looking through the environmental lens, you’ll be amazed at how numberless plain, commonsense changes you can constitute.

farther down are some ideas and resources to forbear you get started, whether you are about to go on a national arena voyage, are playing a hardly gigs hither town, or solely homelessness to discover some changes wide the house:

in regard to more ideas and to check out what other bands are doing to go preservationist, go to: www.ReverbRock.org.

Adam Gardner is the guitarist/vocalist for the purpose the dumbfound belt Guster and Co-collapse (along with his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan) of the non-profit environmental organization Reverb. Operating from deep within the music industry and the environmental in every respect, Reverb “greens” artists’ tours and the music responsibility at gigantic while educating and inspiring music fans to take action.