Who doesn’t enjoy music? If your one to listen to Radio 1 or a hardcore delver of the vinyl dustbins, we all have favourite bands, artists and musicians who we love to listen to, to go see, to buy merchandise of and wear. Music is much part of our culture as it is any other, it creates social groups, friendships can be grown and broken by music, it can evoke memories good and bad and lastly music is one of the artistic mediums that can be used to show how social and political viewpoints are shaping the world. Music allows us to party and shout our deepest desires all in the same song. But at what cost? I don’t want to get too dramatic, but the music industry is a big one. It has a massive effect on what we listen to, how money flows, the types and styles of media open to us, it affects the law of the land (I am sure any one who is familiar with The Pirate Bay lawsuit will know what I am getting at). The Music industry is a machine that has power and affects the very world we live in, from the very lowest level to the highest. Yet it is never really considered in the environmental debate but yet it should be for it vastly affects our effect on the environment.

The humble CD. Everyone knows what it is; everyone has one if not 50,100,200 of them. I own nearly 500 CDS and the joy I get from them is amazing. However the carbon footprint of one CD is around the 250 grams/CO2. Small you might think, nothing too worry about. In 2007 it was the 25^th anniversary of the CD and it was estimated that 200 billion CDs had been sold. In 25 years just in CD’s alone that is 5.0 * 10¹³ grams of carbon which is 50000000 tonnes! The alternative to owning a physical copy? Download? This reduces C0² emissions from somewhere between 40-80% dependant if you burn it off or not and various other variables. But then counter in gigs, the travelling costs, the amount of rubbish created, merchandise created, worn and lost. The list is never ending! For those who have been to a festival have seen how much trash is created from just one small camp of revellers! I have seen the Reading show ground look like a re-enactment of a first world war battle, people burning down tents, chucking waste everywhere, beer cans littering the area, seemingly there forever (of course we know there is a dedicated team of people who clean the place up again, but still…)

Oh God! I hear you cry. OK, ok, I got dramatic! I admit it and I’m sorry. Don’t go chucking out your CD’s just yet, still go to that weekend gig, don’t stop buying merchandise and still go out and enjoy yourself. You know music is my life, my love and to admit that the thing you love is hurting the place you live is a big thing to admit. I don’t aim to make people feel guilty, I go to festivals, I enjoy them, I am just as bad as everyone and to be honest I don’t want feel like someone is nagging in my ear about the environment when I am trying to watch my favourite band. The aim is to be conscientious of our mark on the world by our consumption especially for events and gigs such as Reading/Leeds festival or going to Gatecrasher. The aim of this blog is to look at music’s effect on the environment and how to limit our individual effects. This blog is about looking how to enjoy music in all its glory and still make a difference. As the mighty environmentalist David Bellamy says it and this holds true for all forms of environmental action “Think Globally, Act Locally”, let’s apply it to music and have fun whilst doing it.

Tags: environment, Music, Starting

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Environmental Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.