The Year In Sustainability: Bettering The Environment One Show At A Time

Coldplay has perhaps made the most remarkable achievements within climate-forward touring as they continue on their “Music Of The Spheres” world tour. In June, the band announced they reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 47% compared to their previous stadium tour in 2016-17. An MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative team led by Professor John Fernández assessed the data.

“MIT ESI endorses this work as an important and substantive step toward a new era of eventually achieving carbon-neutral music events by major artists,” Fernández said in a statement. “The band deserves significant praise in commissioning the work and acting as the vanguard for the global music industry as it begins to take seriously the reality of living and making music in the Anthropocene.”

Coldplay – which ranked No. 4 on Pollstar’s Year End Worldwide Tours chart with a gross of $325.5 million – has been planting one tree for every concertgoer, deployed a solar-powered River Intercepter in Malaysia’s Klang River to remove tons of waste and plastic, diverted 66% of all tour waste from landfill, donated meals and toiletries to the unhoused and have an average of 86% return of their reusable, plant-based LED wristbands and solar installations that power the dance floors, stages, electronics and power bikes. The band continues striving to lower their carbon emissions even further.

With climate change affecting our daily lives, including concerts and festivals (see here), sustainability is more important than ever. Several artists are leading the charge with their concerts by working to reduce their carbon footprint and helping ensure a better future for all.

Dave Matthews Band is making efforts to minimize carbon emissions while touring, and Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, teamed up with the band to make DMB’s Nov. 7 show – and their venue – more sustainable.

Enmarket Arena partnered with Green Operations & Advanced Leadership (GOAL) to produce a zero-waste concert, with 90% of waste produced by the show diverted from the landfill.

Kristen Fulmer, head of sustainability at Oak View Group (Pollstar’s parent company) and director of GOAL, has dedicated her life to minimizing the concert industry’s carbon footprint.

“As a company we see, especially in sports and entertainment, the huge opportunity to influence and change the world for the better,” Fulmer told Pollstar earlier this year. “We see our role as implementing positive change as locally as possible. What works in a different market might not make sense in Savannah. We have the ability to be flexible and do what’s best for the community.”

Support+Feed also has made major contributions to benefitting the environment by promoting plant-based foods at venues. The organization is led by Maggie Baird, Billie Eilish and FINNEAS’ mother.

Support+Feed began by delivering plant-based meals to the unhoused throughout Los Angeles, and grew during Billie Eilish’s 2022 “Happier Than Ever Tour.” Now, Baird continues to bring plant-based food options to tours and festivals.

“I think it’s really an obligation of touring companies and touring artists to address forms of carbon offsets, but also forms of community offsets,” Baird told Pollstar earlier this year. “So that is what we offer for artists and touring companies. Fans care about climate change and artists care about their fans, and of course climate change and about the communities that are affected when you’re touring. … With Support+Feed, we can offer artists a chance to not only educate, inform and assist their fans in learning about climate change and how they can make a difference with plant-based foods, but we can provide meals in the community the tour has been, which is a real community offset in my opinion.”

ASM Global also has high hopes for sustainability’s future, with Lindsay Arell – Principal at Honeycomb Strategies, a partner of ASM Global – sharing the company’s efforts towards a better future.

“2023 was the year that sustainability shifted from a buzzword to an action item for the live event industry,” she tells Pollstar. “Accountability, transparency and authenticity.”