By Stone Martindale Jun 19, 2007, 16:21 GMT
The Live Earth concert promoters vow to have a clean and green event, reports Billboard.
Former U.S. vice president Al Gore speaks at a Live Earth concert press conference in Istanbul, Turkey on 12 June 2007. Al Gore is promoting the Live Earth concerts to raise climate change awareness. EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU
The event is to be staged worldwide July 7 and promises to be the first concert in history to be keenly monitored for how well they manage power and waste.
"We want to make the concerts themselves part of the solution," Live Earth's Yusef Robb says to Reuters. "What we're working very hard to do is something that has never been done before: establish a new green event standard that Live Earth will not only follow but hopefully future live events will follow as well."
The concerts will be built "from the ground up to be as green as possible," Robb says. "If there is a choice between a dirty lightbulb or a greener lightbulb to light the stage, we're working to find the technology that can generate the least amount of carbon. If there's a choice between two cups at a concessions stand, we want to identify the best one that not only makes a beer taste good but can also be recycled and didn't use a lot of carbon to produce in the first place."
They have signed on Environmental advisor John Rego of Brand Neutral, as well as independent nonprofits the Climate Group and consultants Seven-Star and Meeting Strategies Worldwide, Rego oversees the Live Earth Global Green Team.
"One of the key objectives of our work is to gather best practices and create a 'greener' recipe for the industry going forward," Rego says to Reuters. "The three main topics we focus on are energy, waste and transport, which are your three main carbon emitters worldwide, but also in a live event."
The diversity of the venues in which Live Earth will be staged is not only a challenge but a benefit, Rego says. "There's not one model that can be used across all of them," he says. "We have stadiums that are 30-plus years old and stadiums that are brand-new and just renovated, so obviously different challenges exist there."
Rego wants concert producers worldwide to gain confidence that their generators, for example, can run well on biodiesel. "It's also about figuring out how your generator setup should be designed -- the process of setting up the energy sources so the minimum amount of fuel and emissions will actually be used," he says.
The Billboard report claims that the Live Earth show has "already secured 100 percent green power (wind and solar). Another venue will raise the temperature slightly to reduce the use of air conditioning."
"We don't want to (name) the venue because it will probably never be noticed by the audience," Rego says, "and that is the point."
"We are looking at setting up boundaries and going through the processes and methodology of how we're going to calculate this stuff so we have a clear understanding of what our carbon footprint is going to be," Rego says. "All of this will be in our final report after the event and shown transparently, setting benchmarks again for the industry saying, 'This is how green we were, can you be greener?'"
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