EDITOR’S NOTE: Enjoy this guest post from Adam Gardner, guitarist and vocalist for Guster, and co-director of Reverb, an environmental organization promoting environmental sustainability to musicians, labels, venues and fans. Read up on why Adam and his wife, Lauren started Reverb, and all about the organization’s newest project–Green Music Group.

By Adam Gardner

Happy 40th Anniversary, Earthday!  Seeing as I’m not yet 40 myself, I have a limited view of Earthday’s progression.  However, in my relatively short time actively participating in the environmental movement, I have witnessed incredible momentum among governments, corporations and individuals.  My view in particular comes from within the music community.

After almost a decade of touring with my band Guster, I realized that life on the road (and its inherent impact on the environment) didn’t need to look so different from my life at home in Portland, Maine.  And yet it was. Dramatically.

The Styrofoam products used backstage, the diesel poured into the buses, the bottles and cans covering the ground after the show … as a musician, I lamented the fact that putting on concerts had such a negative impact environmentally.  While on tour, I encountered many other artists that felt the same way, but didn’t know what to do about it.

In response, my environmentalist wife, Lauren Sullivan and I started up the non-profit, Reverb to make it as easy as possible for musicians, venues and record labels to make responsible environmental choices.  Since 2004, Reverb has greened over 85 major music tours – from Dave Matthews Band to Coldplay to Sheryl Crow – while conducting grassroots educational outreach to over 10 million music fans.  Tour greening efforts include local organic foods straight from the farm, recycling, composting, using reusable water bottles and silverware, purchasing power from renewable energy sources, and fueling tour busses with sustainably produced biodiesel.

Reverb feels very fortunate to be working with so many great individual talents in the music community and leaders in the non-profit environmental world.  We recently realized that we were in the unique position to bring all aspects of the music community together into a powerful coalition.

At the beginning of this year, we launched Green Music Group: a large-scale, high-profile environmental coalition of musicians, industry leaders and music fans uniting in one voice behind a common goal: to use our collective power to bring about widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe.

Our Founding Members include:

• Musicians
  • Dave Matthews Band
  • Willie Nelson
  • Sheryl Crow
  • Maroon 5
  • Bonnie Raitt
  • The Roots
  • Linkin Park
  • Barenaked Ladies
  • Guster
• Labels and Venues
  • Warner Music Group
  • Brushfire Records
  • Shoreline Amphitheater (California)
  • Comcast Center (Massachusetts)
  • Verizon Wireless Media Center (Indiana)
  • Wolftrap National Park for the Performing Arts (Virginia)
  • Brooklyn Bowl (New York)
  • American Airlines Arena (Florida)
• Non Profit Partners
  • Sierra Club
  • Oxfam America
  • Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Hip Hop Caucus
  • HeadCount
  • DoSomething.org
  • StopGlobalWarming.or
  • Music For Relief
  • Climate Counts
  • Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance

In addition to establishing greening guidelines for various sectors of the music industry, we will also activate millions of music fans and build an online community.  From April to August, we’re hosting our first “GMG Challenge,” a series of calls-to-action featuring a video message from each founding artist and cool prize incentives from VIP tickets to a Honda Insight Hybrid car!

Please join us and take the GMG Challenge!

– Adam Gardner

Guitar/vocals for Guster and Co-Director of Reverb

**More Care2 Earth Day Coverage**

ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING EARTH DAY:

• Come Celebrate Earth Day with Care2! – Nicole Nuss 

TAKE ACTION

• Seven Ways to Get Involved for Earth Day – Beth Buczynski
• Get Out! For a Free Book Giveaway! – Judy Molland
• Now is the Time – Angel Flinn
• Don’t Toss that Plastic Bottle – Jennifer Mueller
• White House Initiative – Dave Rochlin 

HOW ARE ANIMALS AFFECTED?

• Top Ten Endangered Species – Sharon Seltzer
• A Review of Disneynature’s Oceans – Beth Buczynski 
• Eating as if the Earth Matters – Heather Moore

THINGS TO PONDER

• Four Rules To Save The Planet – Nancy Roberts 
• Earth…Gay? Coming Out for Sustainability – Steve Williams
• Family Planning and Earth Day – JamieAlexis Fowler
• All My Sisters: Avoiding Breast Cancer – Angel Flinn
• Humans are the Earth’s Problem AND its Solution – Beth Buczynski
• Earth Day at 40: The Politics Erupt – Gillian Caldwell
• Gambling with Global Warming – Beth Buczynski

THOSE MAKING A DIFFERENCE

• 2010 Goldman Environmental Awards – Nancy Roberts
• Climate Champion Dr. James Hansen – Nicole Nuss
• Boyd Cohen’s Quest to Offset Carbon – Suzi Parrasch
• 350.org’s Bill McKibben – Nicole Nuss
• Reverb’s Adam Gardner – Nicole Nuss