Greener music?

mos def - new world water (mp3)

new world water make the tide rise high,
come inland and make your house go “bye”

with mos def’s rant on the environmental and social impact of big business ringing in your ears, here’s a few music related things that both you personally and the music industry collectively could do to reduce it’s environmental impact …

1. buy more digital music, and less cd / vinyl - a study by digital europe suggests that a downloaded album has a “ecological backpack” less than half the size of one that you buy in the shops. (the muso inside is screaming “you should still buy lots of records” right now!).

2. buy a solar powered radio for your shed / garage / office!

3. is your ipod broke, or deemed useless by an upgrade to a newer model? send it back to apple to be recycled - they’ll send all the components away to the right people to be disposed of correctly.

4. try to only go to one music festival next year. hopefully this will lead to a reduction in the overall number of festivals (most of them just rehash the same line-up anyways). or go the other way completely, and have more festivals, with bands joining together (like the curiosa festival in 2004) and reducing the carbon footprint of live music by sharing the logistics involved in a live gig.

5. venues can do a lot to shoulder the responsibility involved - how about only issuing e-tickets, or having all food and drink served in biodegradable kit? many bands have gone to the trouble of paying for their gigs to be carbon offset, but venues could try to provide some power by renewable sources.

6. another idea that i’ve been thinking about lately is idea of “kitsurfing” - much like it’s close cousin couch surfing, this would be where bands, large and small, sign up to the scheme. then if my band, let’s say “the christ punchers” go play a gig in new york, we can fly out there with only a little bit of kit (our guitars, for example) and then we can get to the city and meet up with a local band who will allow us to use their kit. then when someone comes over to manchester to play live, they can use out stuff. clever eh?

this post is best foot forward’s contribution to blog action day, where 15,000 blogs will post today on the topic of the environment.

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