REVERB Director of Impact Madeline Weir Talks Responsible Merch Guide

Many artists and their teams want to make touring more sustainable – including the T-shirts and vinyl sold nightly at the merch stand, but may not know where to start. REVERB, The CSO Shop and Green Music Australia teamed up to create the Responsible Merch Guide, which can “help artists, merch companies, labels, and partners make informed choices, avoid greenwashing, and contribute to meaningful industry progress.”

The guide –  which is available at https://responsiblemerchguide.org – includes quick guides for Responsible Apparel and Responsible Physical Music, offering “high-level, actionable steps in under 5 minutes,” as well as a vetted supplier directory, and a “comprehensive guide covering materials, production, distribution, and marketing for responsible merch.”

The site also includes case studies with real-world success stories from Lorde, Billie Eilish and Nathaniel Rateliff.

REVERB Director of Impact Madeline Weir – who leads the Music Decarbonization Project, manages REVERB’s Climate Project Portfolio and was one of the lead authors of the Responsible Merch Guide – caught up with Pollstar to tell us more. 

Pollstar: Can you talk about the catalyst for the Responsible Merch Guide? 

Madeline Weir: “The responsible merch guide really came out of many of our artist partners at REVERB coming [to us] and saying, “Hey, what are the best-in-class solutions to make our merch more sustainable and ethical, both from the apparel side and from the physical music side?”  So that was kind of the catalyst for us to say to sit down and say, “Okay, let’s do an industry analysis to see what’s out there, what’s already happening and [examine] where there’s room for the industry to grow to meet this growing demand and excitement around more sustainable products both from the artist side and from the fan side. That was really the intention behind the guide.”

I’ve heard that fast fashion is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Would you say that there are any misconceptions or just blind spots in regards to the environmental impact of merch? 

I think people don’t think about it quite as much as maybe people are thinking about fast fashion. 10% of global greenhouse gas CO2 emissions come from apparel supply chains. We’re really seeing … a lot of folks in the climate space saying, “Hey, we need to clean up our supply chains for apparel production and just stop overproducing in the first place – but then also making sure that our materials and our production methods and our shipping and logistics are all  as efficient and smart and ethical as possible.” 

I think the cool thing about merch and the reason why it’s exciting to start talking about merch as a part of that broader conversation around fast fashion is that we know that artists have an outsized impact on how their fans think about topics beyond the music industry, right?

So if an artist comes out and says, “I really care about human rights and this specific issue in this specific country,” then fans are going to follow along and say, “Hey, I also care about this because you care about it.” So when we see artists sort of walk the walk by saying, “Hey,  I’m going to produce merch that number one, represents my brand, but also number two, represents my identity and what I care about,” then they’re going to see fans get even more engaged. 

Who are some artists leading the charge with sustainable merch?

One example, for instance, is Lorde produced merch for her “Ultrasound World Tour” alongside a partner called Everybody.World. They create their blank T-shirts out of reclaimed cotton that was essentially not able to be used in the production process. That wasted cotton, they work into a material that’s usable to create T-shirts.  

And so Lorde’s T-shirts and hoodies were created using that material from  Everybody.World. We actually have a case study within the merch guide about that specific project so that other artist teams can look at that and say “Hey, it’s possible – these were the benefits of it and we can do it too.”

Billie Eilish is another great example. She’s one of REVERB’s artist partners. She works with Bravado, which is Universal Music Group’s merchandise arm. Bravado and Billie Eilish have worked together since 2022. They really started this initiative to figure out what were the best tactics for more sustainable merch for her apparel and outside of the Bravado partnership, she works on making vinyl as sustainable as possible. In 2022, they introduced organic materials across all of her blanks … for her “Happier Than Ever Tour.” And then in 2024 for the “Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour,” they expanded and thought about how many different ways they could create some cool unique items as well as making sure that the baseline materials were great. They transitioned her blanks to be 100% recycled cotton, partnering with Hallotex Organic Sound. They were able to save a lot of natural resources because they’re using recycled cotton rather than virgin cotton, which is great.And then they also use water-based inks … just making sure that there’s no plastic in the garments.

They also worked on the retail side with a company called EcoFashion Corp. And they are offering 100% organic cotton blanks for all of the Target, Hot Topic, and Urban Outfitters merchandise for the “Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour.” And then they also have a partnership with SUAY in LA where they upcycle work wear shirts that have been lightly repaired and overdyed. And then another company called Lost Love where the products are one-of-a-kind reclaimed products. Like a flannel shirt that then they print on and rework and repurpose and then sell as Billie merch. 

The Responsible Merch Guide also includes a case study on Nathaniel Rateliff.

Nathaniel Ratliff, he’s an artist that cares a lot about US-made products. His strategy was how do I work with a hyper local manufacturer, this manufacturer called TS Designs, to produce  sustainably crafted 100% organic T-shirts. There’s a case study about that on our site. It’s kind of one of those things where different artists have different priorities based off of who they are, their identity, their demographic of fans. What this guide aims to do is provide the answers based on what those priorities are for who you should be working with in the space.

Anything I didn’t ask you about that you wanted to add or that would be good for readers to know?

This is kind of an interesting one because it’s always like how do we encourage more artists to care, as well as more fans to care. Whenever I speak on this at events and things like that, I kind of encourage fans to reach out and voice if they’re interested in more sustainable products or more just transparency about the products that they’re being offered as well. I think it’s a really powerful thing that fans can say, “Hey, I really love this organic or recycled cotton or upcycled product.” … Whether it’s the fit, the feel, whatever it is, just kind of encouraging their favorite artists to embrace those changes. I think a lot of artists … because merch is such a huge piece of their revenue streams … they really want to protect margins and reduce risk and make sure that they’re meeting their fan expectations. And so I think fans kind of calling for those expectations is a cool symbiotic relationship that can keep pushing the industry forward on this.

That is a good reminder that it’s not just artists’ responsibility when it comes to sustainability, but fans’ responsibility to speak up for their values too and what they want to see.  

We talked to over 60 stakeholders, whether it was artists and their managers, suppliers, just different folks who are kind of related to this. And there’s also a responsibility on the major merchandising companies to be able to offer these solutions because I think a lot of artists’ teams historically, maybe even just five years ago, would go to their merchandise companies and say, “Hey, we’d love to do something more sustainable or more ethical. What are some options?” And I do believe that the options have gotten a lot stronger. There’s just a lot more options out there and they’re able to operate under like a tour timeline and turnaround and they just have more stock and a variety of stock.

But I do think that the merchandise companies should be going out and looking at this guide too and saying, “Okay, cool. Let’s start a new partnership with this sustainable blank company or this more sustainable vinyl company.” So that they can offer their artist partners those solutions, because there is a lot of pressure and kind of onus on the artists right now to to own all of this and it’s not necessarily their job, you know (laughs) or exclusively their job.

I’ll just say Bravado I think is really taking that seriously and has just made incredible strides for their artists.

Just one other thing I wanted to say – Lorde and Billie are two quite large artists but there are steps that emerging artists or artists playing smaller venues can take as well. I think packaging is a really kind of lowhanging fruit. And also just local production of goods are kind of lowhanging fruit. So, we have lots of information in the guide that would help with artists at any level as well.