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Today is Blog Action Day 2009. This is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Their aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. This year’s topic is climate change.

We all try to make small changes in our lives to be kinder to the earth. As musicians, there are plenty of things we can do within that realm to be environmentally responsible. Here are ten things I came up with. If you have more ideas, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

Power Your Tour Bus with Biodiesel OK…you probably don’t have a tour bus. Some musicians who do, like Michael Franti, have taken this step to reduce the carbon footprint related to constant touring. If you’re just a small band driving across the state, you can still make a difference. If the drummer’s car has the best gas mileage (and still fits all of your gear), take that instead of the singer’s gas guzzler.

Write A Song About Mother Earth Jimi Hendrix once said “Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.”

Back in 1971, Marvin Gaye included the song Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) on his “What’s Going On” album. If you’re taken in by the soft melodies of this tune, you might miss the weight of Gaye’s lyrics, including “Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury” and “Radiation under ground and in the sky…Animals and birds who live nearby are dying.” This was nearly 40 years ago.

The Wiley One, a Phoenix band, has just released a song called Go Green. This is another band that powers their tour bus with biodiesel. A great example of living what you preach. You can download Go Green at the iTunes Store. Here’s a great list of other songs written about the environment.

Just Say No To Aqua-Net If you’re primping for your Friday night gig in your ‘80s cover band (or perhaps you’re still stuck in the ‘80s!), please lay off the aerosol can. I know you need your bangs to stand at attention through the third encore, but chances are some Dippity-do will keep your hair reaching for the stars, and do less damage to the ozone.

Know Your Wood You might have your heart set on that guitar made from a 1,000 year old, endangered tree, but do you really need it? Will your cover of Blackbird sound that much better? Thanks to Greenpeace’s Music Wood Campaign, top guitar makers like Taylor and Martin are now using sustainable woods to build some of their guitar models. Check out my post at GearPipe.com to learn more about guitars built with sustainable woods.

Make Your Shows Zero-Waste Events Your set list is usually the only thing you have control over at a show, but try talking the venue into serving drinks in cups made of PLA, or another compostable material. Set up recycling stations for bottles and cans. My friends own a company in Colorado called Zero Hero. They are brought into large events and do just this. By utilizing compostable materials such as PLA, Sugar Cane or “Bagasse”, and Potato Starch Flatware, they are able to compost or recycle greater than 90% of all waste produced in an event.

Buy Biodegradable Accessories If you’re a guitarist, you probably lose at least one guitar pick per week. They may be small, but this adds up to a lot of waste. A heavy hitting drummer will turn a pair of wooden drumsticks into splinters in the same amount of time. Wheatware is a relatively new company that makes guitar picks and drum sticks out of a biodegradable wheat-based product. So, if a pick falls through that hole in your pocket while you’re out on a hike, you’ll know that someday it will return to the earth!

Build Your Instruments from Found Objects As musicians, we like to tout our creativity, right? Do we really need to rely on big corporations to cut down a tree and use a barrel of oil to ship the wood and power their factory just so we can have an instrument? A group of fourth and fifth graders at the Applewild School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts needed instruments for a concert. What did they do? They built them out of washboards, pans, pots, PVC piping and plastic water jugs. If you’re looking for your signature tone, what’s more unique than this?

Keep it Digital Remember the longbox? If you’re under 20, you might not, but it was a very wasteful 12” tall cardboard package that CDs came inside back in the 1980s and early 1990s. People raised a fuss because they were totally wasteful and served no real purpose. The people won and the longbox disappeared. Today, with the mp3, bands can take this a step further. If you only distribute your music digitally, there’s no manufacturing of the CD or plastic case, no printing of the booklet, no shipping costs to get the discs from the factory to you. And you get to piss off record labels at the same time. Win/Win!

Adopt an Instrument Face it, we love vintage gear. A quality, well-cared for instrument gets better with age. With a little TLC, even a slightly beat-up piece of gear can be restored to its former glory, saving the environmental costs of manufacturing a new one. Check ebay or craigslist for your perfect pre-owned instrument.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Groupies are irresistible, but you need to use them responsibly. If three groupies follow you back to your hotel after a gig, only invite one or two inside. If you tour through the same town more than once, don’t be wasteful, seek out the same guy/girl you met last time. Finally, your bass player is probably lonely. When it’s finally time to fall asleep, be green and send that groupie down the hall to his room. I know this is a serious subject, but I have to lighten things up once on a while!

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