Year In Sustainability: Artists Help The Biz Go Green With Clean Power, Plant-Based Eats & Reusable Cups

In many ways, 2025 has been a disheartening year for the environment, with climate catastrophes – including the Los Angeles wildfires, European heatwaves and flooding from Pakistan to Texas – killing thousands worldwide. And in the U.S., the Trump administration rolled back numerous environmental policies as well as announced plans to repeal greenhouse gas emission regulations.

But, there’s still plenty of good news including the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service announcing that the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer is the smallest since 2019 and think tank Emberg Energy reporting that renewable energy sources have produced more power worldwide than coal for the first time. In the music industry, artists such as Billie Eilish and Coldplay are helping lead the way on making live events more sustainable, with changes that are also good for business.

Plant-based eating got a big stage thanks to Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour,” which launched in September 2024 and ran through November 2025, marking one of the most ambitious green treks yet. Working with nonprofit REVERB and promoter Live Nation, Eilish (No. 30 on Pollstar’s Year End Worldwide Top Touring Artists chart) had an environmental rider for sustainability requests that included single-use plastic reduction, free water refill stations and plant-based food options at concessions with price parity. The tour partnered with GOAL (Green Operations and Advanced Leadership), a sustainability-driven membership and support network for venues, co-founded by Pollstar parent company Oak View Group, on select dates.

At the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Executive Chef Devin Levine converted 100% of its OVG hospitality menu to vegan for Eilish’s Nov. 10-11 shows, including using plant-based chicken patties at Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken stand and serving a vegan version of Trisha Yearwood’s Trisha’s ParTY Nachos. The buffet at the ONEOK Club also went vegan with dishes including roasted cauliflower with a harissa sauce and a plant-based bratwurst.

“We do a meal for our administration team on the venue side and we went totally vegan there as well. A few of them had a few concerns, but after they tried everything, they were like, ‘You know, I could maybe do vegan a couple times a week’ and it kind of opened their eyes up a little bit,” Levine said.

Going forward, Levine says BOK Center plans to continue testing plant-based menu items including offering the vegan chicken patty. BOK Center General Manager of Hospitality Steven Gorham added that the venue also worked with local commercial composter and hauler Fertile Ground to sort and process all eligible waste for composting and recycling, as well as swapping plastic water bottles for aluminum canned water.

GOAL’s recently released case study report for Eilish’s 2025 U.S. shows noted that BOK Center avoided 5.96 tons of waste from landfill, a roughly 75% increase from baseline, and the venue’s ongoing sustainability program will now include installing new recycling bins across all concourse and prioritizing food donations to avoid wasted meals.

“Billie Eilish is an inspiration for environmental advocacy and a motivator of sustainable operations, as her tour is routed through many venues and requires and encourages many impactful operational changes,” says Kristen Fulmer, Head of Sustainability at Oak View Group and the Executive Director of GOAL. GOAL’s latest report showcases the GOAL Members (five venues from the latest US tour stint) that went above and beyond artists requests to push the boundaries of sustainable operations, create impact outside the walls of their buildings, and to ensure that fans had a positive, yet impactful concert experience. This report is aimed to highlight the operators, those behind the scene, that invested time and energy to make it the best operation possible. My favorite part of the report was highlighting the changes that the venue made for Billie Eilish to come through, but have now decided to keep as a legacy effort after her shows.”

REVERB partnered with Eilish along with other leading artists in 2025 including Dave Matthews Band, Lorde, Tyler Childers, My Morning Jacket and Dead & Company, making more than 645 shows more sustainable and raising $3.9 million for environmental and social causes.

The nonprofit organization is releasing its year-in-review report early next year, but already has some milestone stats to share, including how REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project – co-founded by Eilish – expanded its work in 2025 slashing diesel use by 72% between Lollapalooza’s T-Mobile Main Stage and the entire Healing Appalachia Festival, while also providing clean power for Camp Flog Gnaw, presented by Tyler, The Creator, in Los Angeles.

“What stood out this year wasn’t just the scale of our impact, it was the spirit behind it,” said REVERB Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, Lauren Sullivan. Everywhere we went, artists, fans, volunteers, and our partners made the shows feel like a shared space to learn, connect, and take action. People showed up with curiosity and heart, the backbone of community. The progress we made in 2025 happened thanks to collaboration at every level — backstage, onstage, and out in the crowds — and it proved just how much the music industry can collectively be a sustainability leader.”

Another area the industry took action was swapping single-use cups for reusables. Leading re-use company r.World – which also offers reusable plates and to-go containers – was featured on shows by Eilish, Coldplay and Chappell Roan, as well as Warped Tour and Camp Flog Gnaw, among others. Since being founded in 2017, the company has continued to expand including now partnering with all I.M.P. venues. r.World recently hit a milestone of 22 million units washed, which founder/CEO Michael Martin explains means they’ve stopped 120 tons of plastic from ever being produced.

“What has really changed in 2025 is more and more venues and concessionaires are realizing single-use aluminum and compostable cups are actually worse for the environment than even single-use plastic,” Martin says. “And, as we know, we have a plastic crisis. This increased awareness is fueling the rapid growth of the reuse movement.”

He added that he spoke at the Green Sports Alliance symposium and the main buzz there was that 2026 is going to be the year of reuse “because basically it’s enough critical mass now where people are seeing that it works. We actually have done all this analysis which shows that it actually makes economic sense – [reusable products] can be close in price to single-use. If you look at the big picture, because you’re throwing out less stuff, your disposal fees go down, you’re cleaning up less stuff, so your cleanup costs go down. You sell more beverages because higher per head sales with reuse. So, all of a sudden, even though the cups might cost a little bit more, if you look at the overall benefit to the venue, reusable can be more profitable than single-use cups.”

Other re-use companies that have launched in the past decade include Bold Reuse, Re:Dish and Cup Zero. In June, GOAL teamed up with nonprofit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy to announce the “Protect Where We Play Tour” to reduce plastic waste with Bold Reuse managing all reusable cup operations at participating sporting events and concerts by Eilish, Coldplay and The Lumineers.

Coldplay (No. 3 on Pollstar’s Year End Worldwide Top Touring Artists chart) spent 2025 playing more dates on the “Music of the Spheres World Tour,” which drastically slashed its carbon emissions – 59% less than its previous stadium tour – by making changes including reducing the impact of freight by a third and using more efficient lighting equipment.

As Pollstar‘s Year End issue was going to press, the results of the MIT Climate Machine Report was days away from being released. Available now here, the study of the live music industry’s carbon footprint was conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, co-funded and supported by Warner Music Group (WMG), Live Nation, Hope Solutions, and Coldplay. The study features an analysis of more than 80,000 live events presented in a detailed technical assessment, accompanied by Live Music Has a Baseline, a companion report that distills the findings into practical insights for the live music community.

“Live music moves culture and communities,” says Madeleine Smith, Sr. Director of Environmental, Social, Governance at WMG. “This report shows where touring has the biggest impact and gives organizations the clarity to explore solutions that support artists, audiences, and the planet.”

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