Pearl Jam
By Jonathan Cohen

Pearl Jam's music is woven through with references to the Earth and the oceans that nurture it, so it's no surprise the group has made environmental initiatives among its top priorities over the past decade. In fact, these issues are so important that guitarist Stone Gossard opted to skip Pearl Jam's last-minute Sept. 23, 2002, opening gig for the Who at Chicago's House of Blues due to a previous commitment with the Conservation International Partnership.

After conducting an "eco-audit" on its businesses in 2003, Pearl Jam worked with Conservation International to render its 2002/2003 tour carbon neutral. Energy offsets from that outing funded the management of a new protected area in a Madagascar rain forest.

While on the 2004 Vote for Change tour, the group took the lead in encouraging other acts to fund alternative energy projects along the tour itinerary. Among these were the installation of solar-powered hot water and electrical power systems at the Family Centers in Madison, Wis.

In 2005, Pearl Jam switched to B99-fueled biodiesel tour buses, and has since invested more than $120,000 in nine organizations devoted to climate change and renewable energy.

"We feel like we're just scratching the surface at this point, and there are a couple of different reasons for that," says longtime band spokesperson Nicole Vandenberg. "Sometimes it's because we're waiting for the technology or production to catch up and make it easer for us to make a change, and sometimes the technology and production are waiting for us to find the best ways to take advantage of them without compromising fan experience, or production schedules or increasing costs. I think it's the same challenge and opportunity that exists for all industries right now, and it's an exciting, evolving process."

Sheryl Crow
By Jonathan Cohen

In April, Sheryl Crow headed back to school in a biodiesel bus with environmentalist Laurie David to dialog with college students about the growing problem of global warming. Crow says the issue was a personal one, owing to how it has affected the Gulf Coast of Florida, where her family has owned a house since she was a toddler.

"There have been several really bad shark attacks in the last three years up on the Panhandle, which is where our house is," she recently told Billboard. "Come to find out, from talking to the fisherman, that the cold water was registering at 89 degrees! That's frightening, when you make the correlation between that and Katrina, knowing that warm waters mean colossal storms. It only looks to be worse in the future. That is really what propelled me toward this issue."

At the campus events, Crow performed songs like "A Change Will Do You Good," "Everyday Is a Winding Road" and "Soak Up the Sun" acoustically with guitarist Tim Smith. "I think we bring a little bit of comedy to the evening, but really, the objective is to light a fire under everybody, to propel this environmental movement," she said. "We open up the floor to questions and answers, to have a dialog with students. We also want people to be part of a campaign toward leadership, and vote for people who are environmentally conscious."

That's not to say the message went down easy with everybody in attendance. "I made jest about the four protesters we had, making the argument that they loved being able to work on their tan all year long," Crow said. "Well, clearly that's misinformation. That's a good point to be made, and thank goodness they illustrated this for us. Global warming is not just nice, warm days in December. It's extreme weather on both ends: more hurricanes, ice storms, hotter summers. But we've had very intelligent questions, which I knew we'd have at the college level. College kids are very dialed in."

While on the road, Crow and company were trailed by a documentary film crew. "We're hoping to make a documentary, kind of following up [the Al Gore film] 'An Inconvenient Truth,' about what you can do on a personal level and in your businesses," she said.

Jack Johnson
By Gary Graff

Jack Johnson is no greenie-come-lately. As a surf filmmaker, Johnson and colleague-turned-manager Emmett Malloy made a point to "make as small of a footprint as possible and leave a good impression on the places we went." When he became a touring musician, it was only natural for Johnson to maintain that ethos.

"I grew up in Hawaii and surfed all the time," the singer-songwriter explains. "I was out in nature more than I was outside. I've always had a really profound respect for nature, so (being eco-friendly) just felt natural to me."

But Johnson is quick to credit others with guiding him towards a green path for his musical endeavors. "I was definitely not the first," he acknowledges. "I was part of that little chain. I heard about Neil Young and Willie Nelson and Pearl Jam running their trucks and buses off bio-diesel, and I wanted to be part of that crew and jump on it."

Johnson, who's playing the Australian Live Earth concert in Sydney on July 7, went green on his 2005 tour, using bio-diesel fuel, recycling, donating leftover backstage food to local shelters, selling eco-friendly tour merchandise and signing on to the 1% For The Planet fund.

Johnson and Malloy more recently employed a green stance in constructing a new headquarters and studios for their Brushfire Records label in Los Angeles. The facility uses solar power and was built with environmentally friendly materials such as cork, marmoleum and bamboo, with low or zero VOC primers and paints, recycled shingles, insulation made from denim scraps, energy efficient lighting, Low-Flow toilets and as many existing fixtures as possible.

The office will operate on eco-friendly policies, and Brushfire is developing a "green guide" for its artists and personnel. Johnson and company will continue to work with Brushfire's distributor, Universal, to develop green packaging for its releases.

"With our record label, Emmett and I decided we wanted to do something long-term and something to be proud of forever," says Johnson, who's recording his next album at the Brushfire studio for an early 2008 release. "Our friendship kind of blossomed off of having these same ideas. And now more and more people realize it's just the right thing and the smart thing to do."

Mana
By Leila Cobo

Mexican rock group Mana's commitment to the environment dates back to 1994. That year, the band launched the environmental non-profit Selva Negra, and ever since, has been unerringly consistent its message. Many of Mana's hits are imbued with subtle environmental messages that go hand in hand with the group's very pointed calls for environmental conscience.

Through Selva Negra, Mana has funded reforestation efforts throughout Latin America, the upkeep of two turtle habitats in Mexico (to date, over 1 million turtles have been released to sea), construction of low-income housing and work with multiple native Indian communities.

Now, Mana is in the midst of its most ambitious project. The group has brought together Mexican government officials and respected educational institution Universidad Autónoma de Mexico (Unam) in an effort to create mandatory environmental and ethics classes for Mexico's elementary school children.

"We used to think it was all about education," says Mana lead singer Fher. "There's a phrase in a Chicago aquarium that reads: 'You can't love what you don't know, and you can't know what you haven't been taught.' Think about it. Children learn geography, but what good is that if their lakes aren't taken care of?"

But there was another element that even superseded education. "Ethics," he says. "We may have the know-how needed to preserve, but if we have no ethical values, we're going to mess it up."

To that end, Mana is spearheading efforts to put a proposal before Mexico's Congress by 2008. To accomplish this, both the government and private sector will be working together not just in finding the resources to change the curriculum, but also in training the nation's teachers to impart it. It doesn't end there, says Fher. "If we're able to pull this off with the academic support it needs, we can export it free of charge to any country that wants it and can adapt it to its reality.

"We've reforested, worked with native tribes and done so many things," he continues. "But if this transcends it, will be the most important of all. My wife is about to have our first child, and I always tell her: When my child goes to school, he will study what we built for him."

Martin Sexton
By Ray Waddell

Martin Sexton's biodiesel-powered tour bus, parked up outside Nashville's Exit/In, is about as far away from the globe-straddling glamour and glitz of the upcoming Live Earth shows as it's possible to be.

But for "new folk" artist Sexton and thousands of musicians like him, going green is something to focus on every single day, rather than just 7/7/07 (Live Earth).

"I've always been conscious of waste," he says, sipping his "musician strength" coffee (organic, of course). "I'm always conscious of turning off the water, the lights, bringing the recycling out every Wednesday morning."

Like many people, Sexton was profoundly influenced by Al Gore's Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth." "It handed to me on a silver platter what my impact is from touring and just living on this Earth," he says. "So I figured I could take this a step beyond my own curbside recycling and bring it into what I'm doing for a living."

Sexton started planning a green tour, "but I wasn't sure how it worked." So he partnered with Berkeley, Calif.-based health food company Clif Bar's GreenNotes program, which helps touring bands nail down things like biodiesel (cleaner-burning fuel made from natural, renewable sources), organic, recycled merchandise, and the sale of renewable wind energy credits -- Cool Tags -- to offset the tour's CO2 emissions.

"I love what they're doing," says Sexton. "It's setting a positive example that this can be done, it's not cost-prohibitive, and it's not a pain in the ass."

Guster
By Jill Menze

Boston pop/rock trio Guster has been a "green" act on the road ever since it partnered with environmental nonprofit organization Reverb more than a year ago.

Co-founded in 2004 by Guster guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner and his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan, Reverb has teamed up with a number of big-name acts such as Barenaked Ladies, Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow and is currently backing John Mayer and Dave Matthews Band to help "green" their tour initiatives while educating and inspiring concertgoers.

Gardner says Reverb's model is based on Bonnie Raitt and Kathy Kane's Green Highway Tour, which started in 2002. In addition to fueling buses and trucks with biodiesel, setting up recycling programs and ensuring concerts and venues are carbon neutral, local and national nonprofit groups are on site to provide outreach to fans via interactive "eco-villages."

"The big message from Reverb is that [environmentalism] is a positive thing," Gardner says. He says the goal is not to be "preachy" or a buzz kill to the concert experience but rather "just make it really fun and try to make these solutions to global warming as positive and sexy as possible."

In addition to selling eco-friendly merchandise such as organic cotton T-shirts printed with non-toxic ink, Guster has implemented an offset program where fans can purchase renewable energy credits to neutralize their commute to and from the concert. The band also hopes to organize online carpooling, which Gardner feels will not only reduce carbon emissions but help strengthen its already tight-knit fan base.

Among the other ways Guster has "greened" its tours include using rechargeable batteries, aluminum water bottles and biodegradable utensils as well as requesting eco-friendly products backstage and local, organic foods in the contract rider. The band also sells its old guitar strings as jewelry with the proceeds benefiting nonprofit organizations.

On a larger scale, Guster, who is signed to Reprise, is helping Warner Music Group become more green. Guster's latest EP, "Satellite," was the band's first carbon neutral release, and more than 1 million copies of its back catalog are now carbon neutral as well.

Gardner hopes to extend Reverb's outreach to more labels, venues and radio stations and has seen progress with station WBOS in Boston, which recently turned carbon neutral after the 14th installment of EarthFest in May.

This coming spring, Guster will embark on its third annual Campus Consciousness Tour, which spreads environmental awareness to campuses across the country. Gardner feels these tours have been extremely successful and have boasted enlightened discussion and demonstrations such as Pimp My Clean Ride, which brought fans behind the scenes on Guster's tour bus. "We actually brought them on the bus and showed them the [eco-friendly] stuff we were using," he says. "A lot of students were really psyched, and they learned something."

The Ditty Bops
By Evie Nagy

Amanda Barrett and Abby DeWald, better known as the Ditty Bops, kicked up some national publicity last summer by pedaling from California to New York on a 12-state, all-bicycle tour to support their Warner Bros. album "Moon Over the Freeway." Besides two dozen of the L.A. duo's playful, Vaudeville-esque performances, the trek supported an important call-to-action for about pollution and energy conservation.

The Ditty Bops recently expanded their environmental mission with You And I Save the World, a nonprofit they created earlier this year to raise awareness for environmental issues. The organization's first project is a campaign to reduce the use of plastic. "Initially, Abby had the idea of making outfits out of plastic bags and wearing them to shows, to bring attention to how easy it is to reuse bags," says Barrett. The band then launched an online petition, and is selling reusable tote bags and hand-sewn produce bags to benefit environmental charities. In March, San Francisco honored Barrett and DeWald for their advocacy of that city's ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags in supermarkets.

Known for their creative use of quirky imagery in band marketing, the Ditty Bops also incorporate environmental messages into visual projects. In addition to publishing an online comic strip called "The Environmentalist's Dilemma," the band is going green with the next edition of their popular Bikini Calendar, which will be printed on post-consumer recycled paper with soy-based ink. Following previous years' bicycle- and vegetable-themed bikini calendars, Barrett says the 2008 "Save the World" theme will feature photographs of Barrett and DeWald illustrating "ways that we can save the world, like alternative energy and universal health care ... in bikinis."

Beginning in Los Angeles in July, the Ditty Bops will embark on a "Farm Tour" across America, playing traditional shows as well as concerts to benefit farm organizations including the Growing Connection and Farm Aid. Meanwhile, the band just finished recording its third album with producer Mitchell Froom, a release date and label for which have yet to be announced.

Dave Matthews Band
By Jonathan Cohen

Dave Matthews Band has kept environmentalism top of mind since its inception in the early '90s, but its most lasting contribution to the cause has a sweet twist. In 2002, the group partnered with Ben & Jerry's on the Lick Global Warming campaign, which is dedicated to global warming relief and environmental education.

DMB has donated its royalties from two branded Ben & Jerry's flavors to its own Bama Works Foundation, which then funnels them to SaveOurEnvironment.org's anti-global warming efforts. Via the campaign, fans have sent more than 75,000 letters to Congress urging further action.

"Dave Matthews Band considers the support of green initiatives part and parcel of being responsible inhabitants of the earth," says Patrick Jordan, who works closely with the band at Red Light Management. "Whether it's offsetting the carbon footprint of the band's touring or playing an event such as Live Earth, which can mobilize millions to combat the climate crisis, the band is committed to doing its part."

On Sept. 8, DMB will play a benefit at Atlanta's Piedmont Park to help fund the expansion of the area. The group has also worked with Native Energy to purchase carbon offsets for all its energy usage dating back into the last decade. "This is for every airline mile and every hotel room -- any time we've made an environmental impact," Jordan says.

Bonnie Raitt
By Jonathan Cohen

Longtime environmental activist Bonnie Raitt was the driving force behind Green Highway, an "eco-village" she instituted on her 2002 tour. The exhibition aimed to educate fans about alternative energy such as wind and solar power, and connected interested parties with environmental organizations in each tour market.

"It's no accident that we're in danger of losing both our ecological and our economic well-being at the same time," she said at the time. "I feel too many government and corporate policies are inseparably shortsighted and we've created Green Highway to demonstrate that working in harmony with nature can offer real solutions for preserving both our planet and our prosperity."

The Green Highway concept has since been adopted by Reverb, the environmental organization formed by Guster's Adam Gardner and his wife Lauren Sullivan. Reverb has recently helped "green" tours by the Fray, Norah Jones, Barenaked Ladies and Dave Matthews Band.

In 2005, Raitt upped her own environmental ante by offsetting the carbon imprint from 30 of the 39 shows on her North American tour with wind energy. That year, she received NARM's Harry Chapin Memorial Humanitarian Award for her dedication to activism. Raitt has also been active with Friends of Vote Solar to urge the California Public Utilities Commission to adopt a $2.5 billion solar incentive program.

Xx
By Steve McClure

The Japanese music community is not usually noted for backing social or political causes. One exception is Artists' Power, a group of well-known musicians who back in 2002 decided to try to increase public awareness of environmental issues.

Members of Artists' Power include producer Takeshi Kobayashi, Kazutoshi Sakurai (lead singer/songwriter with pop/rock group Mr. Children) and performer/composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Their first project was to set up and provide capital for AP Bank, a lending institution whose aim is to support non-profit environmental groups. AP Bank charges just 1% interest.

In 2003, Kobayashi and Sakurai formed a musical unit called Bank Band to help publicize the bank's activities and environmental issues in general, in particular the need to adopt renewable energy sources and to conserve energy.

The band started out by playing shows at various mid-sized venues when the members could take time off from their other career commitments, and in 2005 released a single, "to U," which was used as the theme song of the nationwide TBS TV network's nightly "News 23" news program.

AP Bank further raised its public profile by holding the outdoor AP Bank Fes last July in Tsumagoi, Shizuoka Prefecture, drawing 60,000 fans. In 2006, the bank and its backers opened the store Kurkku in Tokyo's youth-oriented Shibuya district that sells organic foods and other ecologically sound products.

The second AP Bank Fes, held July 15-17 in Tsumagoi, was even more successful than the first, with attendance of 75,000 and performances by major J-pop acts such as Kobukuro, BoA, Pornografitti, Kazumasa Oda, Qururi, Bonnie Pink and Keisuke Kuwata. This year the festival is scheduled for July 14-16, again in Tsumagoi.