In honor of Earth Day (April 22), Billboard, in conjunction with PlanetGreen.com, asked musicians, executives, experts and its readers to send along useful tips on how the music industry can help protect the environment. Happy planet saving!
 | 1. GET INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITIES WHERE YOU TOUR Jack Johnson, artist During our last tour, there were five to 10 [nonprofit] groups [with booths] at each show, and we would donate some of the money from that night to those groups. We also would do matching grants so they could raise more through their membership. It was neat because a lot of the groups would tell us before the show that all their members were 35 and older, and after the show they had gained some 20-somethings who brought a lot of new life to their groups. For a long time you got people who would play devil's advocate and says, "Well, if you were trying to something green, they why would you just not tour? That would probably be the lowest impact." And that's true-but everybody needs music. The show's worth doing even if it's just for the music. It lifts spirits in the town. It always felt like it was worth doing. And it feels really nice to know that when we leave town, there will be these groups that have a bigger membership and are able to do more with the funds we raise. |
 | 2. STOP USING PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES Dave Haywood, multi-instrumentalist, Lady Antebellum We've spent the last year-and-a-half trying to reduce water-bottle waste on the road by using Brita's refillable Nalgene water bottles. As our tour grows, it's a really easy way to reduce our trash. |
 | 3. USE RECYCLED MATERIALS FOR PAPER MERCH Craig Minowa, singer/songwriter, Cloud Cult
You could fill a landfill with the amount of music-based merchandise produced globally each day. Most of the fans are going to buy an album of an artist they love whether it's made ecologically or not, so it's up to the artists and labels to ensure their products are made in environmentally friendly ways.
It's now almost as affordable to use 100% post-consumer recycled content in the CD packaging and posters. Vegetable-based inks are as ubiquitous as their toxic counterparts. PVC-free shrink-wrap is available from any CD manufacturer upon request, and organic cotton is not only widely available, it's darn-right trendy. So many people in the music industry are drunk on ego, they've failed to recognize the power they have to lead by positive example. We're musicians, we're artists, and we're dreamers by trade, so we have no excuse but to use those skills to envision a greener world and to bring that to reality. |
 | 4. PARTNER WITH OTHER GREEN ARTISTS Adam Gardner, guitarist/vocalist, Guster; co-director, Reverb
In the past five years, there's been great momentum generated by artists going green on tour-from big efforts like coordinating biodiesel fuelings in tour buses and hosting local environmental groups in a fan eco-village, to simple but important things like using reusable water bottles and offering eco-friendly merchandise. The next step is to bring these like-minded artists together with others in the music community to turn the tide with how the music industry does business.
My nonprofit, Reverb, recently launched a new project-Green Music Group-with the aim of doing exactly that. GMG is a large-scale, high-profile environmental coalition of musicians, industry leaders and music fans coming together to bring about widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe.
In addition to establishing greening standards for various sectors of the music industry, we will activate millions of music fans and build an online community. From April to August, we're hosting the first GMG Challenge, a series of calls-to-action featuring a video message from each founding artist, a nonprofit partner and cool prize incentives from VIP tickets to a Honda Insight hybrid car. |
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