The troubling environmental issues our planet faces are more prevalent than ever, but so are a growing number of organizations who are doing their part to drive positive change through community, awareness, and action. Through the intersection of music and environmental advocacy, these organizations are making major waves through their efforts. With Earth Day coming in hot (no pun intended), now is as good a time as any to do your part. Without further ado, here are some badass organizations you can support right now that merge music and environmental activism for a better tomorrow. 🌱
Eco-Friendly Music Organizations That Are Making a Difference
REVERB
Founded in 2004 by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her musician husband, Adam Gardner of Guster, REVERB is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering millions of individuals to take action toward a better future for people and the planet. They partner with musicians, festivals and venues to green their concert events while engaging fans face-to-face at shows to take environmental and social action. In addition, they create and execute comprehensive programs to reduce concert and tour footprints from eliminating single-use water bottles to coordinating local farm food to fueling sustainable biodiesel in tour buses to composting and donating food waste and so much more.
Since its inception, REVERB has implemented amazing campaigns like the Music Decarbonization Project, Music Climate Revolution, #RockNRefill and many more projects that have made significant progress in eliminating single-use bottles, putting an end to music’s carbon pollution, and so much more.
Sustain is a non-profit music organization that creates partnerships between the music industry and environmental organizations by identifying opportunities to connect musicians and nature organizations, and increase awareness about the work of both. Sustain also promotes environmentally sound practices across all aspects of the music industry, especially through their two main projects: Songscapes and Trail Sessions.
Through these efforts, Sustain works to:
Foster public support for environmental causes through music
Link conservation organizations with musicians to improve exposure for both.
Support more inclusive public lands
Develop new audiences for bands and public lands
Create connections between musicians and public lands
The Sustainable Concerts Working Group (SCWG) is a collaboration of music industry leaders and environmental advocates who believe in an environmentally responsible and sustainably driven music community. They started the BYOBottle Campaign which encourages artists, venues, festivals, and fans to reduce plastic pollution in the music industry by promoting reusable water bottles and water refill stations both backstage and front of house at music events.
Through this campaign, artists are also encouraged to travel with reusable water bottles and include language in their rider asking venues to provide water refill options backstage, while venues, festivals and promoters commit to providing water refill stations for artists and fans. As a fan, you can also make the BYOBottle commitment and show your support of the music industry’s efforts to reduce single-use plastic waste right here.
Dreamed up and led by Vivie-Ann aka BLOND:ISH as a grassroots movement, Bye Bye Plastic is a team of 8 eco warriors on track to wipe out single-use plastic in the music industry. They’ve inspired thousands of DJs and event promoters to back the initiative since launching in 2018, through the #PlasticFreeParty movement and Eco Riders.
Launched as an official foundation in January 2020, they’ve partnered and consulted with industry giants like International Music Summit (IMS) & SXM Festival. They’ve also led sustainability panels at ADE Green, IMS, Brighton Music Conference and beyond, while turning heads and gaining coverage from media including BBC Newsbeat, GRAMMY, BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, The Line Of Best Fit,
Clash, Rolling Stone, Mixmag, DWTV (Germany). Whether you’re an artist, industry professional, brand or corporation, you can get involved and support the cause. From downloading their Eco-Rider, making a donation, or volunteering at one of their events, there’s a lot you can do to get involved.
A Greener Future is a not-for-profit company committed to helping events, festivals and venues around the world to become more sustainable and to reduce environmental impacts through certification, training, expertise, and facilitating the exchange of best practices. Their team helps organizations and individuals set and achieve their sustainability goals. analyzing existing actions and operations, developing and implementing strategies, recommending sustainable solutions, and providing tools and expertise for decision making and delivery. Specifically, that collaborate with these events to prevent further pollution, waste, emissions and biodiversity loss, and so much more.
The Music Climate Pact is a global platform, initiated by the UK’s Association of Independent Music (AIM) and in collaboration with UK record labels association the BPI, as a response to COP26 and the urgent call for collective action to combat the climate crisis. Given their unparalleled reach, they have a unique opportunity to help artists and audiences engage with climate issues. The Pact they created sets out a series of high-level commitments that serves as a declaration of intent for the global music sector. It brings together key actors (the independent music community, major music groups, and others) to align as a sector and address our biggest environmental impacts in an efficient and collaborative way.
They believe that through collective action and a unified voice, the music industry will be best-placed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate our contribution to global climate change and ignite broader societal action on the climate crisis.
Through music and the arts, Artists Project Earth aims to achieve permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to levels that minimise further degradation of ecological systems and human livelihood. APE recruits internationally known musicians and artists through albums, concerts, art exhibitions and art related projects to raise awareness of climate change and funds for campaigns and disaster relief.
To date they have funded over 400 campaigns, events, actions and educational projects globally, as well as disaster relief. APE has also supported passionate individuals and organizations who raise awareness and inspire change in the fields of climate justice, global warming, fossil fuels, reforestation, agro-forestry, wildlife protection, reef conservation, marine plastic pollution, seed projects, wetlands restoration and more. Not only that, they’ve produced music with some of the biggest international artists in the game to raise money for their cause, including Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, and many others.
