Green Scene Issue #28

Nonprofit environmental project Reverb cleans up rocknroll, one tour at a time

By Kirsten Klym
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

Fashion and lyrics notwithstanding, rocknroll can be a dirty business. Between electricity-hogging light and sound equipment, gas-greedy tour buses, and acres of desiccated water bottles, even the tiniest club tour can pose significant threats to the environment.

Enter Reverb (reverbrock.org), a project of nonprofit organization ARIA (Artistic Resources In Action) Foundation, and its co-founder Lauren Sullivan, who previously worked for the Rainforest Action Network in South America. Sullivan says she and husband Adam Gardner, the guitarist-vocalist for indie rock band Guster, started Reverb in 2004 to “combine our worlds of environmentalism and music.”

Partnering with artists who have similar goals, Reverb tours with musicians such as Bonnie Raitt, Alanis Morissette, and Barenaked Ladies, and sets up self-contained “eco-villages” — demonstration booths sponsored by vendors of renewable energy sources, community service groups, and purveyors of sustainability solutions. The project also implements “green” offsets to carbon emissions and fossil fuels through the purchase of wind power and the use of bio-diesel in tour buses. “We need to really grasp that the natural world has value in its own right and needs to be respected and protected,” Sullivan says.

On March 1, 2006, Reverb launched its first annual Campus Consciousness Tour in San Diego with Guster. The two groups teamed up with colleges across the country to organize auctions, food drives, and local community service projects, which, in addition to some fabulous tunes, gives students the opportunity to learn and make an instant contribution. With a “green” cruise scheduled to hit the Caribbean in 2007 and requests for assistance from the Cannes Film Festival, going international is a foregone conclusion. “I would also love to expand our work to more of the pop and hip-hop realm,” Sullivan says.