TreeHugger Picks: Rockers Going Green
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 02.28.07
We've mentioned musicians who are going green on tour, but they certainly aren't the only ones who are making good music while doing good things for the planet. Here are some of our picks for indie and old-school rockers, singer/songwriters and folkies whose commitment to making green choices takes a close second to making good music.
1) Cloud Cult (who have a great new album, by the way) uses 100% post-consumer recycled paper and non-toxic soy ink for their album cases, purchases offsets for all energy consumed during recording and, so there are more to hug, plants 10 trees for every 1,000 albums sold.
2) Kelley Stoltz produced a music-industry first when he teamed up with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and the Green-e program of the Center for Resource Solutions to record using 100-percent renewable energy.
3) Sub Pop Records (Kelley's label, as a matter of fact) followed suit by purchasing enough Green-e certified Green Tags to equal 100 percent of the company's energy use.
4) David Gilmour, best to known to some of us as the front man for Pink Floyd, can add "TreeHugger" to his long resume; he has returned from the dark side of the moon to release a climate-neutral album, On An Island.
5) Sarah Harmer literally walks the green walk; she recently spent a summer on the Niagara Escarpment, the 725 kilometer ridge running from Niagara to Tobermorey in Ontario to protest its exploitation for aggregate to make concrete.
the lovely song sarah harmer wrote in that vein, "escarpment blues," has become my favorite thing to sing to my houseplants. she's released a dvd by the same title that's part tour, part nature documentary, and she offsets all of her tour-produced emissions with wind power certificates. what a gal, eh? thanks for recognizing that rock philanthropy doesn't begin and end with bono.
The first time I was exposed to this was with Earth Crisis album "Destroy the Machines" printed with soy ink and on recycled paper. This was in 1995 with Victory Records. 12 years ago some were doing it even when it wasn't 'trendy.'
Have you not seen Eric Prydz take on the Pink Floyd song Another brick in the wall? The new remix title is Proper Education and the video spinning on MTV right now is all about cool energy saving. Cool BMX and Free Running kids enforce energy saving in a housing estate to unknowing inhabitants. The ending is super cool. The production endorsed by David Gilmour is of CO2 neutral. Search "Eric Prydz" on Youtube and be inspired.