Making music tours more sustainable: Reverb and the Green Music Group

Their site states: "We take a positive 'work-with' approach and believe that being green is not all or nothing; many people doing some things will have more impact than some people doing everything. All of us can be active participants in protecting the environment. As a result, Reverb creates real, large-scale, and measurable change."

So far, Reverb has greened over 85 major tours and 1,300 events, reduced 67,000 tons of CO2, and reached over 10,000 fans. Some of the past tours they've been involved with include The Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, Maroon 5, Phish, John Mayer, and Ben Folds, and they are currently partnered with the 2010 Lilith Fair and Brandi Carlile tours.

Gardner and company didn't want to stop there. “We recently realized that we were in the unique position to bring all aspects of the music community together into a powerful coalition,” said Gardner. “We wanted to do more – our founding artists, venues and labels wanted to do more, and our fans were calling on us to take the lead.”

[image-1]Thus, the Green Music Group was started. GMG is a project of Reverb: "A large-scale, high-profile environmental coalition of musicians, industry leaders and music fans using our collective power to bring about widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe." The founding members of GMG include The Dave Matthews Band, Linkin Park, Sheryl Crow, The Roots, Willie Nelson, Guster, Bonnie Raitt and The Barenaked Ladies, as well as Brushfire Records and the Warner Music Group.

GMG officially launched on January 30, 2010, and is partnered with the Sierra Club, Oxfam America, and Music for Relief, among others. This non-profit project has the same goals as its parent organization, but on a much larger scale, facilitating the "greening of the music community, and magnifying the work of national nonprofits, all while building a vibrant community committed to environmental action." GMG will also be providing small grants for up-and-coming artists looking to be more eco-friendly and will soon be accepting applications for their Green Grants program.

Read more about Reverb and the Green Music Group on their websites. If you sign up for GMG's e-mail updates you'll automatically be entered to win one of three guitars signed by some of their founding artists: A Gibson Les Paul Limited Edition Smartwood, a Martin Sustainable Wood Series Acoustic Guitar, or a First Act Bambusa Electric Guitar.

Be sure to check out this list of the 10 best eco-friendly summer music festivals.