Music to my ears

The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign is a major forest restoration effort with a goal of planting a billion trees across the planet by 2025. A billion. With a B. That seems like a pretty lofty goal. But through cause marketing with some big-name brands and even a popular rock band, the Nature Conservancy is confident in their campaign’s success.

The Dave Matthews Band Summer 2020 Tour has committed to help plant one million trees with The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees program. These trees will be planted across the globe in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, China and Africa.

“By restoring these healthy forests, we will provide many benefits to our everyday lives from helping to curb the effects of climate change, to providing clean air and fresh drinking water, to securing homes for thousands of species of plants and animals,” The Nature Conservancy says in a released statement.

Dave Matthews Band fans can support the effort and contribute $2 to plant a tree per ticket when purchasing tickets for the 2020 Summer Tour through Ticketmaster or Warehouse, The Official Dave Matthews Band Fan Association. 

Beyond the tree campaign, Dave Matthews Band (DMB) takes its environmental ambassadorship seriously. The BamaGreen Project is an environmental collaboration between DMB and the nonprofit, REVERB.

Some of the band’s “tour greening” efforts include:

• Farm-to-stage local farm food for catering
• Sustainable biodiesel for tour buses and trucks
• Composting, up-cycling and recycling
• Reusable bottles, mugs and refill stations backstage/buses
• Rechargeable batteries/stage battery disposal
• Tour carbon offsets: Neutralizing emissions from venue energy, flights, hotels and ground transport
• Reusable and compostable catering products

Fans can participate in the RockNRefill reusable water bottle program or use the free water refill stations.

Since teaming up with REVERB, the band has:

• Removed 121 million+ pounds of CO2 from the air
• Eliminated 478,000+ single-use plastic bottles at shows
• Composted 138,000 pounds of food waste

Color me impressed by DMB’s efforts. I know there are a lot more performers out there with the same sense of environmental responsibility. Think how fun it would be to partner with some of these folks (and their ginormous fan following) for tree-planting efforts in your community.

For more: nature.org/en-us; davematthewsband.com; www.reverb.org/dmb