Home / Do It Yourself, Do It Together / Take Action / Bands
Bands
Let's face it my fellow musicians - under the one-night-stands, partying, and rocking faces off every night, there beats a sensitive, caring heart in each of us. (Do musicians actually have one night stands and party all the time?) Obviously, practicing twice a week and playing shows is not good for the environment. Being the sensitive souls we are, we all want to do our part to reduce our consumption whenever we can! Rock without guilt!
Here are some ideas to get your creative minds flowing:
If you're on a budget, plug all of your gear into power strips and always turn the strip off when it's not in use! This will greatly reduce electricity consumption by eliminating the evil “vampire power” or “phantom load.”
Carpool to practice and shows! Many bands do not share a house, neighborhood, or area code which can make traveling hard, but carpool whenever you can!
Ever-present “Merch!” Make your CDs, albums, demos, EPs, LPs, available digitally! This eliminates material and energy used to produce a CD, its case, and any other packaging! Also check out bamboo, fair trade, and organic t-shirts!
Touring bands: Turn Off the Engines! “Leaving it on uses less gasoline that shutting it off and restarting” is a fallacy. Don't be lame.
Plant a Tree! Buy your gear from fellow green-minded people - Laguna plants a tree for every guitar sold! In love with your brand new Gibson SG? Gotta have that Gretsch Firebird? Plant a tree yourself!
Attention Show Promoters! You can do your part too! Offer preferred parking/admission prices for those who showed up with 3 or more people in their automobile!
All Twin Reverb lovers rejoice - Solar Powered amplifiers!! Our amps take a lot of juice to get going and keep the music coming, so get yourself some solar panels and plug in! Be sure to check out these links:
Cool solar power(ed) strip
Make your own Solar Powered Amps
Now that you're equipped with a few Environmental Rocking tools, eRock for short, let us know if you have any other ideas! contact@greenlightzine.org
For more examples of environmentally sustainable bands, check out reverbrock.org and sundancesolar.com.
