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Live Earth’s Footprint
The numbers are in and it looks like this year’s Live Earth concerts came very close to meeting the organization’s event estimates for carbon emissions, according to Live Earth’s final assessment report.
Pre-concert assessments estimated that about 18,526 metric tons of carbon emissions would be produced during the worldwide event.
In the months following the shows, Live Earth found the production’s actual carbon footprint to be 19,708 metric tons, which was "significantly below all pre-event external estimates in every category except for audience travel," the report said.
About 87 percent of the production’s emissions were reportedly generated through audience travel. Nearly 1 million people attended the concerts in person on seven continents.
"From the start we were committed to making the concerts themselves low-impact events and to achieving a high level of transparency in conducting a broad report," Live Earth founder Kevin Wall said in a statement. "We hope that we’ve not only set the bar high for ourselves, but have set a new watermark in sustainable event production for the industry at large."
While 97 metric tons of waste was collected during the shows, 81 percent of that waste was diverted from landfills through recycling or composting efforts.
Live Earth stadium events on average emitted 300 to 400 tons of carbon, the report said, while transportation for the shows generated about 900 to 4,500 tons. Similar events should aim for 300 tons of carbon emissions for production and 1,000 tons for transportation, the organization recommended.
"Some say we could have done more with less, that our method was antithetical to our message. Frankly, you can only reach so many people standing around a campfire singing ‘Kumba Ya,’" Wall said.