Earth Day Special: Venues Team With Billie Eilish For Zero-Waste Concerts

As climate change continues to impact the live industry with damaged venues, canceled shows and lost revenue, arenas are finding creative and meaningful ways to make a difference.

The approach and level of participation varies by market, but the consensus among operators is that prioritizing sustainability initiatives is good for the planet, business and the venue’s relationship with green-leaning artists and fans.

“Every sustainability effort that we recommend is because it’s good business,” said Kristen Fulmer, head of sustainability for Oak View Group (Pollstar’s parent company) and director of GOAL. “And yes, it’s to save the planet as well.”

A recent example of industry collaboration around sustainability was the Billie Eilish “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour.” Support + Feed, a nonprofit founded by Eilish’s mother, Maggie Baird, that promotes a plant-based diet to help combat climate change, and GOAL (Green Operations and Advanced Leadership), a program launched by Oak View Group that offers venues a comprehensive roadmap and resources to sustainable operations, worked together to promote sustainability in food and beverage at nine venues.
“One of the main missions of GOAL is to help people build their own version of what sustainability looks like, because it can look like so many different things,” said Fulmer. “So, we really try to equip people with what feels right to their brand and their community, where they are on their sustainability journey, and even what infrastructure is available to them.”

The participants developed individual programs that included plant-based menu items, and hosting plant-based food drives.

“Billie Eilish’s fans specifically are so engaged and passionate, not just about her as a musician, but also everything she cares about and stands for,” Fulmer said. “It’s always great to see the venues that leverage the power of the collective of fans and work with them.”

The venues included CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore, Newark’s Prudential Center, Pittsburgh’s PG Paints Arena, Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, Chicago’s United Center, Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, Portland’s Moda Center and Inglewood’s Kia Forum.

As a group, there were three zero waste shows; eight venues had a reduction in single-use plastics; and four arenas offered free or discounted alternative transportation for attendees. Collectively, there was a 52.4 percent average waste diversion rate per show, which equals 117,000 pounds of waste that was reused, recycled or composted.
With the level of venue participation and results, Fulmer said GOAL will continue to look for opportunities to engage venues around like-minded tours and work with organizations like REVERB and others to get it done around busy calendars.

“There is definitely a blueprint,” said Fulmer. “When worlds align, we can create an action plan that isn’t detrimental to the venues who are hosting a lot of events all the time. We want to get ahead of it enough so that we can build programs that they can implement.

“With a little look ahead – a few weeks, months in advance – we can plan some really fun activations that are really impactful, like these.”
Climate Pledge Arena

In lieu of a traditional artist gift for Eilish, Climate Pledge Arena and One Roof Foundation, the community arm of the arena and NHL Kraken, gifted a legacy project on behalf of the pop star installing water stations and providing reusable water bottles to students at Lowell Elementary, an underserved inner-city school in Seattle.

“You want an artist gift that resonates with that artist,” explained Rosie Selle, vice president of marketing for Climate Pledge Arena. “We knew going in – Billie’s team is very vocal about not doing traditional artist gifts because she is cognizant about the environmental impact that a lot of those may have like large vinyl wraps that you can’t recycle.”
With input from the community, the Foundation chose the Lowell Elementary project because it aligned with the venue’s climate justice mission, would resonate with Eilish and have a lasting impact on the community. The Title 1 school serves impoverished students and a homeless shelter – 30 percent of students are unhoused.

“They didn’t have reliable drinking water on every floor outside of the bathroom sinks,” explained Selle. “They had to stop class and escort these little kiddos to the bottom floor just to get a drink of water.”

The Arena, which opened in 2021 with a capacity of 18,300, funded three water bottle filling stations – one on each floor – and gave 700 refillable water bottles to the students.
Eilish provided the quote for a plaque at the school: “The only way to be certain of the future is to make it ourselves.”

Her concert was 100 percent powered by renewable energy. Nearly 400 pounds of food was donated by fans to families in need and more than 7,500 fans chose to arrive by public transportation, further cutting the show’s carbon footprint. The venue routinely provides free public transit with every ticket to a concert or game.

“We want to be a force for good,” Selle said. “It’s authentic to who we are as people at the arena, but also what our arena brand stands for.”

Prudential Center

Steve Rosebrook, executive vice president and general manager of Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, never forgets Earth Day. It’s his mom’s birthday. Personal connection aside, Rosebrook has been a green advocate throughout his 36-year building career.

Rosebrook first learned about the GOAL venue collaboration on the Eilish tour early in the booking process.

“It was something that made us refocus on best practices and sustainability in green,” said Rosebrook. “What I really appreciated about Billie and her mother was how they focused and pushed the venues to focus on these initiatives and really make a difference.”

One of the benefits of high-profile sustainability partnerships like the Eilish tour is that it makes the discussion around sustainability more mainstream when asking for capital funds to tackle green initiatives from retrofitting equipment to make it run more efficiently to switching to LED lighting in the bowl and NHL New Jersey Devils practice rink in the off season.

For the concert, Prudential Center worked with Levy Restaurants, the in-house hospitality company, to offer five new plant-based meals including a vegan burger, vegan chicken tenders, a falafel vegan sandwich, vegan Italian farro salad and a vegan hot dog. They used compostable straws, cups, utensils and plates throughout the arena and Eilish fans donated 111.5 pounds of food to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

The 17,500-capacity venue, which opened in 2007, recently started composting kitchen waste and excess food is distributed to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey through the venue’s Food Forward Jersey program sponsored by Campbells. Resources are devoted to upgrading internal mechanical systems including HVAC for maximum productivity and efficient energy usage.

“There are so many things that you can do when the focus is on it and you get the resources to do it,” explained Rosebrook.

State Farm Arena

Eilish’s appearance at State Farm Arena was, coincidentally, the 500th zero waste show at the Atlanta venue.

“Every event we do here is done in a sustainable way,” explained Sofi Armenakian, head of sustainable strategy at State Farm Arena. “We track every show and when we started to tally out to the date of the show, we were like, ‘Unbelievable, this is going to be 500th zero waste event – and it’s Billie!’ It was so special.”

Eilish has a green streak at State Farm Arena. Her first zero waste gig was at the arena in 2022 and she held the first U.S. edition of her Overheated climate and sustainability conference at the venue on Nov. 3, 2024.

In 2022, the NBA home of the Atlanta Hawks set the industry standard with TRUE (Total Resource Use and Efficiency) Platinum certification from the world’s leading sustainability and health certification and credentialing body the Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI). The venue, which opened in 1999, was the world’s first sports and live entertainment venue to receive the certification.

When State Farm Arena prioritized sustainability in 2019, the venue diverted an average of 10 percent of total waste. Since May 2021, the venue has consistently diverted a minimum of 90 percent of fan-generated waste from landfills.

For the Eilish concert, 36,000 pounds of waste was diverted, which equals the weight of a fully loaded tour bus. State Farm Arena, which is also partnered with Levy Restaurants, increased the number of plant-based options including a vegan pizza and a burrito. Armenakian noted that the venue also “increased all of the locations that guests were able to purchase them.”

State Farm Arena, which does all sorting on site, is about to hit another impressive milestone with a total of 10 million pounds of waste diverted from the landfill.
“Our strategy is to operate efficiently which scales to more sustainable solutions,” said Armenakian. “When you think about it through the lens of sustainability it is really about resource efficiency.”

Xcel Energy Center

At Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota sustainability practice is a daily event.

“We already had a really robust sustainability platform here at Xcel Energy Center and on our campus,” said Kelly McGrath, vice president and general manager of Xcel Energy Center. “A lot of things we did for the tour we already had in place. We swapped out a couple food options because that was obviously important to Billie and her mom. And we switched one of our grills to be an Impossible Burger station.”

The venue also added a vegan salad and mushroom taco to their existing options.

“We don’t always move a lot of food at a concert because usually it’s later at night and the people aren’t eating,” explained McGrath. “But it was important to the tour and we made an effort to introduce a few things that we don’t normally carry.”

At the end of the night 6,000 pounds of waste was composted and 8.65 tons of waste – the equivalent of 4,900 microphones, was diverted from the landfill. Xcell Energy powered the show with 100 percent renewable energy.

Xcel Energy Center opened in 2000 and can seat 20,554 for a concert and 18,000 for an NHL Minnesota Wild game. The Minnesota Wild recently launched Trees for Travel. The program, which is a partnership with the Green Cities Accord, offsets the carbon footprint for team air travel throughout the NHL regular season by helping to protect and grow the city’s urban tree canopy. The team also started using electric Zambonis in 2024.

“We decided probably 15 years ago that we can do better as an organization and operate in a more sustainable way,” said McGrath. “We started with waste and moved to energy usage and over time we’ve kept taking little bites at the apple to figure out how we can operate in a more sustainable way. And over time, it’s become part of our culture.”

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