I wasn’t too bummed, because as I alluded to earlier, it did open my eyes to Mana and their Selva Negra Foundation, and Missy Higgins and her carbon neutral tour. The article also highlighted the other things their top ten green bands, or “Green Ten”, are doing to share their music and their ideals. Like, The Roots giving away autographed compost bins, or Radiohead’s desire to travel only when needed, and to partner with Best Foot Forward when they do, or Serj Tankian’s Sky Is Over website, or a whole fleet of biodiesel buses, etc… (I’ll let you read the article for more).

I was also happy that Billboard did leave out one of Jack’s most important “green” features, so that I could be left with a little writing of my own…

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If the five easy steps in this video are not enough for you, then take a look at this list from Seoul’s 2008 Earth Day organizers of ten more ways to go green, Korean style.

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More and more buzz is being generated in the music industry about artists greening up concerts and venues greening their practices. I was able to see some of this first hand while spending four days at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, KS, this past weekend.

Lured by the temptation of such acts as Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Son Volt, Yonder Mountain String Band, Widespread Panic, and my personal favorite, the John Butler Trio, my husband and I set out for an extended weekend of camping and concerts approximately 45 minutes west of Kansas City at Clinton Lake State Park. We were pleased to find multiple efforts at sustainability from the moment we got to the venue.

When driving into the park, after receiving our wristbands from festival organizers, volunteers handed us two plastic bags: a clear bag for trash and a green bag for recyclables. Dubbed "Recycalusa" Wakarusa's recycling efforts extended to glass, aluminum, cardboard, and plastic. Wakarusa even urged festival-goers to bring canned beverages, not bottled, because the market for glass recycling was far smaller in Lawrence than for aluminum. There was a Recycalusa booth where festival-goers could take their green bags, sort their recycling, and win prizes such as band merch.

For those who didn't want to head to the booth (like us), campers could place both green and clear bags on the "corner" of their respective campgrounds, and Waka volunteers would pick up both recycling and trash. There were also recycling bins everywhere in the venue: 240, according to festival organizers, clearly marked for trash, plastic, aluminum, and glass. New Belgium Brewery, sustainability leaders in the beer industry, and sponsors of the festival, exclusively sold beer at the venue, and encouraged drinkers to reuse the plastic cups the beer was sold in.

Waka organizers began offsetting the energy costs of the festival in 2006 through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation's partnership with Zephyr Energy, which features a mix of low-impact hydro and wind power projects ( I know some of you are already shaking your head at the idea of offsets–keep reading). This year, organizers were able to eliminate about 40% of their total energy costs by eliminating one of the main stages. Festival patrons could also offset their travel to Lawrence by purchasing wind tags offered by Zephyr Energy.

Food vendors offered more veggie options than any other event like this that I have been to. There was an amazing Lawrence restaurant, Local Burger, that had veggie burgers, beef, buffalo, and elk burgers, and numerous other outstandingly delicious meals all locally sourced, yet reasonably priced (best veggie burger of my life, if you must know). Indian, Chinese, and Mexican-themed vendors all provided numerous meat-free meals. Most vendors made a special effort to use packaging that could be recycled at the festival.

Perhaps my favorite part of the sustainability efforts at Wakarusa was the Sustainability Symposium. Featuring such individuals as Big Coal author Jeff Goodell, Land Institute president Dr. Wes Jackson, and Director of Sustainability for New Belgium Nic Theisen, we spent almost three hours listening to six individuals discuss energy and sustainability, policy and ecology, music and beer. I'll be writing about this at-length on Thursday.

There were a few disappointments over the weekend (other than Saturday night's rain). Despite the obvious efforts of Waka organizers to make recycling just as convenient as regular trash, I was heartbroken to see how few patrons took advantage of recycling. There was also some confusion on the location and time of the different sustainability speakers, some of whom only spoke for a few minutes. I was also under the impression (from Waka's website) that all packaging from Waka food vendors had to be either recyclable or compostable, but that was not the case. All in all, though, the disappointment I had was mainly because people weren't taking advantage of the sustainability efforts of the concert. And the music, most definitely, was well worth the drive.