State Champ Radio green
Making live music events as environmentally friendly as possible is a task executed by thousands of workers who install solar panels, transport waste, collect reusable cups, measure energy use and execute other operational tasks. But every employee doing this work ultimately falls under the purview of any given live event company’s head of sustainability. Erik Distler is one of them.
As vp of sustainability at AEG, Distler leads the company’s corporate sustainability program. There are executives in similar roles at Live Nation, ASM Global and Oak View Group – and together, this group is responsible for greening a significant percentage of global events and venues. In February, the group – who Distler says all know each other given that the sustainability space is relatively small — appeared together in public for the first time during a panel at the inaugural Music Sustainability Summit in Los Angeles.
“The symbolism of us being together on that stage is powerful and hopefully inspiring to the industry that we’re cheering each other on and perhaps exploring what we can do together,” says Distler. With the stakes being so high, there’s an incentive to share information, he says, particularly given that “this work is really replicable. What you do in one venue or festival can, barring local infrastructure, be done anywhere else.”
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Distler came to his role after working in sports and entertainment sustainability for more than a decade. At AEG, he and his five-person team design and direct sustainability initiatives across the company’s more than 25 festivals, as well as over 50 music venues; nine arenas and similarly sized venues; four entertainment districts; and more than 15 tours to date.
AEG has had a sustainability program for 15 years, but when Distler joined in October 2021, his task was to “take our program to its next phase” amid the worsening climate crisis, the increasing demand for sustainable events among consumers, and new sustainable technologies and regulations.
“The external forces are louder and more influential than they’ve ever been,” he says. “That’s really pushing the industry forward in a way that’s making the case for companies to prioritize and devote internal teams to understand this work, build resources and take action in a meaningful way.”
Distler spent his first three months on the job meeting with 50 internal stakeholders to better understand the business, how to make it more sustainable and get senior executive buy-in, which he says “was fundamental and really paved the way to get more granular with other colleagues.”
From the information collected, he created a strategic framework around sustainability, along with an official vision statement — “Inspire the world’s many voices to protect our planet” — and a mission statement declaring that the company is “committed to operating responsibly and to catalyzing the influence of live entertainment to preserve the planet for future generations.”
“It’s important to have a strategy on a page,” Distler says, “and ultimately a framework that can be used to guide us moving forward.”
This framework also includes a set of focus areas including carbon and energy, waste and materials water, and stewardship and engagement, along with six guiding principles (“collaboration over competition” and “communicate with transparency and often” among them) and seven pillars: operations, suppliers, employees, fans, communities and partnerships.
These partners include Schneider Electric, a French multinational energy management company that AEG has worked with for 14 years for support with target setting, strategy, energy sourcing, market intelligence and risk management. A Greener Future in the U.K. and Three Squares Inc. in the United States are sustainability consultants, while r.World provides reusable cups in all of AEG’s Denver music venues, along with select venues in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with six Goldenvoice festivals. For Coachella and Stagecoach, AEG has donated 44.2 tons of food to its partner Coachella Valley Rescue Mission and 34.6 tons of material to the Galilee Center, which provides clothing and other basics to families in the Coachella Valley.
Distler has also sought additional help. Last year, he worked to get four people hired into three newly created sustainability roles. “It’s not uncommon that a sustainability team is small in count and under resourced,” he says. “ What I see as a large part of my responsibility is ensuring our department is sound economically and building and making the case for staff and resources.”
In addition to Distler and his new hires, the team also includes a data and analytics lead responsible for measuring the impact of AEG events and “all the other people that have jobs like those in festival operations that eat, sleep and breathe this.” Additionally, AEG’s employee-led People For The Planet group is composed of employees from other parts of the company who want to contribute to sustainability projects.
Altogether, this group is “probably pretty emblematic of a sustainability department,” Distler says. “You may have a small core team, but you’ve got external and internal partners that help get the work done.”
Given that Europe has tighter sustainability regulations that the U.S., the industry there offers good examples of initiatives that might eventually be adopted in the States. Last November, AEG’s O2 Arena in London launched a green rider: a best practice guide for sustainable touring and events that outlines what the venue is doing in key areas.
“It’s a great way to sit with an artist and their management team and figure out what we can do while they’re [at the O2] that’s truly sustainable and ultimately communicated to fans,” Distler says of the guide, which was produced in collaboration with U.K. based sustainability consultancy A Greener Future.
Distler says his team is “constantly” collaborating with artists including Billie Eilish, who in June 2022 hosted an event at The O2 called Overheated that featured vegan food and water refill stations along with climate-minded programming. Last April, after learning that rock band Muse “was passionate about climate issues,” he says, AEG’s Crypto.com Arena made a donation on behalf of the and to the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which works to further clean tech, climate action and the green economy in the city.
Distler on site at Cali Vibes
Courtesy of AEG
AEG made a donation to the L.A. Clean Tech Incubator, which works to further clean technology in the city, from AEG’s Crypto.com Arena on behalf of the band. Last year, the team also worked with Maggie Rogers to measure the carbon footprint associated with one of her U.S. tour stops and provided that info to Rogers’ team, along with mitigation suggestions.
In the U.S., AEG has launched a comprehensive sustainability program for its Goldenvoice festivals — including Coachella, Stagecoach, Cruel World and Just Like Heaven. In particular, Goldenvoice’s Cali Vibes functions as a testing ground for sustainability initiatives, including solar panels that light parking lots and the transformation of unpurchased merch into staff uniforms, with these projects be studied for possible use at other events.
“I always say that sustainability doesn’t happen within our team,” says Distler. “Things like waste avoidance or diversion at a festival happen in collaboration with our operation teams, partners and haulers. That requires work that doesn’t ultimately get done in the corporate office.”
While the music industry is ultimately responsible for a tiny fraction of global emissions and waste, Distler is resolute about its impact. He recalls being on a panel in New York last fall alongside sustainability heads from major corporations with, he says, “huge footprints, like millions of metric tons of emissions.”
And yet when it came to the audience Q&A, “everybody had questions for me, and no one had questions for them.” Given its “influence [on] the heart and mind,” the music industry has a responsibility to focus on sustainability, share these initiatives with fans and “create the setting for positive, inspiring and uplifting work.”
It helps that Distler “absolutely” sees real progress being made, with fans, partners, artists and athletes “putting the right level of pressure on the businesses to take on meaningful action.” He says many of the major corporations AEG works with are also taking on sustainability in a more focused way.
“It’s sitting down with partners and saying, ‘What are your focus areas? Your goals? Your aspirations?’” he says. “Then sharing ours and seeing what lines up…seeing the eagerness and willingness of our partners to ideate and brainstorm is really encouraging, and is signaling that the industry is moving in the right direction.”
On Feb. 5, 300 workers from North America’s music industry gathered at the inaugural Music Sustainability Summit to discuss the impact of climate change on their business. “People were always asking where to start, what to do and how to do it,” says Amy Morrison, co-founder and president of the Music Sustainability Alliance, which organized the symposium. “We saw a need to bring people together in order to not duplicate work, to share best practices and to spotlight the good work everyone is doing.”
Morrison formed the 501(c)(3) nonprofit MSA with co-founder Mike Martin during the pandemic and near the end of her 23-year run as senior vp of marketing at Concerts West/AEG. While semiretired, she still consults for the company and continues running tour marketing for The Rolling Stones, including their North American Hackney Diamonds trek this summer. The touring shutdown enabled her to complete a certificate program in sustainability at Presidio Graduate School, and she now dedicates most of her working hours to the MSA. (The alliance is currently collaborating with a nonprofit fundraising consultant to raise money to pay staff.)
The MSA’s mandate is the creation of “climate-focused professional resources and community,” Morrison explains. “It’s a relatively simple concept, but nobody ever saw the need for it. The downtime we had to reflect during COVID was helpful, and the timing now couldn’t be better to accelerate and lift everyone up together to do this.”
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The Music Sustainability Summit will be an annual gathering that takes place in Los Angeles — where the MSA, like Morrison, is based — on the day after the Grammy Awards, and MSA will organize a number of year-round initiatives and track environmental regulations that will affect the industry, with the two most pertinent being truck emissions and phasing out single-use plastics. It also offers a music-industry resource guide.
“It still blows my mind that I get to work with the Stones,” Morrison says. “Living in L.A., this poster beautifully marries the SoCal vibe and the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world.”
Maggie Shannon
By mid-April, the MSA plans to have three to five working groups dedicated to promoting sustainability practices in the industry. Each will share solutions and actionable recommendations. In collaboration with the Eller College of Management, MSA is also conducting an analysis of the economic impacts of extreme weather on the live industry and how environmental regulations will affect touring practices. Morrison is also a member of the advisory group for the Sustainable Production in Entertainment Certification, which is being developed by the U.S. Green Building Council-Los Angeles in partnership with experts to develop SPEC’s green certification program for workers across the entertainment industry.
Beginning in May, MSA will hold a series of webinars that will focus on merchandise, food choice impact, easy ways to green events, regulations and incentives, among other topics. Plans are also underway to launch quarterly member happy hours in L.A. and New York.
“I oversimplify things a lot, which I think is a gift and a curse,” Morrison says, “but it makes me not scared and it motivates me to try things because it’s like, ‘We can do this.’”
It’s often said that despite the music industry having a very small impact on climate change, it has an outsize influence on the culture that can be leveraged. What are your thoughts on that?
I agree as a general statement. I feel it’s really important, though, that we have our house in order and that the industry can walk the walk, speak with confidence and be legit and authentic in getting that message out. I think that supports artists who want to speak out as well because they have the confidence that the industry is behind them.
The MSA wants to create that confidence. The mission is to have a net-zero music industry by 2050 [with] lots of milestones along the way.
“This clock commemorates The Concert of a Lifetime, Simon & Garfunkel’s 1993 residency at [what is now] The Theater at Madison Square Garden. I grew up listening to them, and being a part of this historic reunion was a career highlight.”
Maggie Shannon
What initiatives is the MSA working on?
We’ve been working on a Get Out the Vote working group. There’s a lot of interest, and it involves everything from message targeting, deciding on markets and the intention of activating younger people to vote [with consideration for] the climate. We’re also talking about how to use the channels we have: What can a venue do to get the word out? What can a promoter do? Then the campaign needs to be created for them to actually have something to share. It could even be picking a city that needs the impact and finding a local artist there [to get involved] who could be just as meaningful as getting a superstar to do it. We’re working with folks that create campaigns, along with political experts.
You work in the touring industry. What initiatives do you have in that sector?
In the next couple of months, we’re launching a campaign for [tours] to have one less truck. It’s about flipping the narrative that [the goal] is no longer having the biggest tours with the most trucks — it’s about still putting on a beautiful show, but with fewer trucks. That’s something we can measure over time. It’s a ways down the road from launching. We’re also working on courses for worker education on how to be green, like a certification you get in how to do your job in a green way. We need operational change, and it only comes from education.
“Running the marketing for a festival of this magnitude with these artists was an incredible experience. I got to draw on my touring experience while learning new things.”
Maggie Shannon
What would a curriculum like that teach?
It could be how to set up composting backstage, or how to go down your supply chain and source items, or how to measure energy use. Really basic stuff, starting on the production side.
Because production has the biggest impact?
Yeah, and it’s easier to adopt. It’s important for systemic change that the people who are doing the work, who are really making operations hum, understand the work. And if their bosses or management see the value in funding this type of program, then it’s also coming from the top.
How do you see the music industry generally becoming greener?
I see it in the expansion of departments, with more people being hired and more resources getting put behind it. [Live Nation’s touring program] Green Nation is starting to really empower its production teams to lead in the green space, and they’re putting green coordinators out on the road. It’s not like, “The runner or the [production assistant] can do it.” There has been a shift in the acknowledgment that this is actually a job.
The MSA is working with big companies that compete with each other. What has that been like?
We’ve found that in the production vendor world, it’s a no-brainer. They’re all game to be on the same calls and do things together. At the summit, the panel with the [sustainability leads from AEG, Live Nation, ASM Global and Oak View Group] was a good start. A secret mission of mine is to find a project for the four of them to work on. Maybe to find a city where they all have a property — I’m sure there’s more than one — and work on [climate-minded] infrastructure together. It can be a small thing to do as proof of concept. I think the working groups will bring some of that because a lot of our role is to facilitate, convene and set the table for people.
A friend gifted Morrison this Al Hirschfeld drawing of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. “As a longtime Deadhead and Hirschfeld fan, it makes me smile to see Jerry doing what he loves.”
Maggie Shannon
I think part of the road map for us is to come up with some science-based, peer-reviewed recommendation to take to the C suite and say, “Here are a couple of projects that maybe if all the venues work together on, this is the impact it could have, and all it will cost you is X, Y or Z.”
I can see how having such options would be useful for busy people who don’t know where to start.
Maybe I’m dreaming, but they really should all work together on this, and I think they will, with the right projects and the right impact.
Climate change can feel so overwhelming. How do you avoid existential dread and stay in a place of progress and optimism?
I’m a half-full gal. I am optimistic, and I’m fed by support, good work and successes. The summit was amazing. I couldn’t have dreamed of it to be any better. And everyone still showed up during a crazy rainstorm. There were a lot of years of banging the head against the wall around all this, but change is happening. So I’m not driven by fear — I’m driven by making a difference.
This story will appear in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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