Archie Roach, Gunditjmara and Bundjalung Elder and musician
You’re an artist. You care about our living planet and you want your music-making to be as green as possible. This guide is for you.
There are lots of reasons to go green. Shit’s getting real. That’s not news to anyone. Everything we love is at risk. The very conditions for life on earth are threatened.
At a deeper level, this crisis represents a fault between our modern society and the living planet. The truth is, we are nature. So what we do to Mother Earth, we do to ourselves.
It’s time we honoured that truth and returned home to more harmonious ways of being.
As our summers heat up, as fires and floods get worse and our living planet buckles under the strain of the modern world, it’s natural
for us to want to step up. We know that a planetary environmental crisis can’t be solved with individual efforts — it needs coordinated, collective action. Right now, many people are asking ‘What can I do?’. And as musicians, we can do more than most because we can lead and inspire broader social change.
Musicians have a platform and a voice, so we’ve got a role to play in both doing what’s right and in speaking up about it. With power comes responsibility, as they say. We want to help you use your cultural power well.
That’s what Sound Country is about: for thousands of generations, the music of this continent was connected to Country, in spirit and action. We’re here to support musicians to reconnect, realign and reinspire that ancient and still-breathing purpose.
This guide has been produced by Green Music Australia. It’s one of the many ways we support, organise and inspire musicians and the broader industry to improve environmental performance — from events, energy use, tours and transport, to merchandise, packaging and waste. Leading by example and bringing our audiences along with us, we believe the music sector can create deep cultural change.
Let us support you. Our job is to support musicians to go green and to help share your success. Reach out to us and join the movement of musicians across this wonderful continent who are greening their practice and standing up for a healthy and safe future.
Authors: This guide has been written by Rhoda Roberts AO, Matt Wicking, and Green Music Australia. See the end of the guide for author bios and a list of other wonderful contributors.
“Green Music Australia has created a unique platform for artists to share their experiences and learn from each other. Their resources are hugely helpful, and include practical tips, like sample language to green your hospitality rider and tools to reduce your emissions” - Lisa Mitchell
A set of principles for going green
This guide is full of tips and tricks for greening your musical life. Let’s start with some high-level principles to consider as you take action.
Earth-Centred
We need to put life and living systems at the centre, where they belong. Our only home in the universe, Mother Earth, is the source of all we hold dear — including music. And her land, waterways, creatures and sky have inherent value of their own.
First Nations First
When a person steps forward to care for our living world, we follow the lead of the Indigenous peoples who have been caring for Country for tens of thousands of years. This ‘greening’ work needs to centre Indigenous leadership and include dismantling the systemic racism, colonisation and oppression in our industry and wider culture.
Action-Oriented
On the journey to a greener future, it isn’t always easy to see the road ahead. Instead of shooting for perfection or getting confused about the ideal, guilt-free next step, choose something. There’s no perfect path and action has energy and magic in it.
Aiming Upwards
Rather than just cleaning up the mess at the end, go as far back in the process as you can. Reduce and reuse before recycling; avoid energy use and improve efficiency before buying solar panels or offsets; choose easy-to-reach venues and advocate for a culture that values greener transport, as well as informing audiences about green transport options.
Culture Matters
As a musician, your cultural footprint is arguably your most important impact. So use your public platform to share what you’re doing, ask questions and connect with others. We need deep, systemic change — not just greener light bulbs or album packaging — and that happens through collective political and cultural change.
Healing For All
Nature isn’t separate from society or our economies. And consumerism, individualism, colonialism and the patriarchy got us into this planetary mess. So we need to align our environmental efforts with other movements for justice, healing and equity — including those focused on gender, race, class, sexuality and ability.
Music is a spiritual, healing, medicinal practice – a very sacred thing… I feel the voices coming through me and I try to honour them, because if we don’t speak certain truths about how we want society to be, it’s never going to get to where we want it to be.
Neil Morris aka DRMNGNOW, Yorta Yorta Kaieltheban songwriter, hip hop artist and producer
There’s no perfect way to feel about the planetary crisis — and we’ll all respond differently.
With a lot to tackle, it can be normal to feel distressed or overwhelmed. So it’s important to put your mental health first and take breaks as you need. Nobody is a perfect advocate for the living planet, and the music industry can be a challenging place to work at the best of times. We need you healthy, connected and strong. So go easy on yourself, take it step by step, and reach out for help when you need it.
Connecting with the wider living world
The benefits of connecting to Country can be profound. Spending time with Mother Earth and caring for her are both healing acts. From Common Ground:“The warmth of the sun kissing your skin. The feeling of salt in your eyebrows after a swim in the ocean. The support of soil beneath your feet – grounding you with every step. The sound of rain after dry season – nature’s music. These are feelings felt by us all. We can all find beauty and inspiration in the natural world.”
Connecting with and care for self
Through regular meditation and mindfulness exercises, we can learn that acceptance, gratitude and compassion are antidotes to denial, anger and fear. And that these things aren’t just ideas, but states of being that we can experience, strengthen, and draw on when we need them. Yoga and exercise help, too. As does time off technology, consistent routines, listening to relaxing music, and good sleep. Find a practice, teacher or an amazing free app and dive in.
Connecting with community and taking action
None of us needs to do this work alone. It’s harder and less fun that way. While it can be difficult to share your emotions about the climate crisis, talking to your friends can help you feel more connected and less isolated. You might consider joining a Climate Cafe to share your thoughts and feelings in a safe space. And remember, other times it’s good to switch off and just enjoy each other’s company.
Seeking support
If you feel overwhelmed, reach out for professional psychological support. The Australian Psychological Society offers detailed guidance on coping with ecological distress, building on many of the points above. Psychology For A Safe Climate has a range of free community tools to help you explore climate-related emotions, as well as links to Climate Aware Practitioners if you want to talk to a professional.
There are many caring people and organisations you can call if you (or anyone you know) needs urgent support. In fact, Support Act delivers crisis relief and mental health and wellbeing services especially for Australian artists like you (plus crew and music workers, too). And they offer a First Nations Dedicated Support Line that facilitates a culturally safe experience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, crew and music workers.
Contact Support Act
"Health is about so much more than simply not being sick. It’s about getting a balance between physical, mental, emotional, cultural and spiritual health." - Dr Tamara Mackean (Waljen woman, Public Health Medicine Physician and Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine)
This guide is chock full of green tips and ideas for music-makers. But for a quick overview, see how you stack up against the summary checklist of green music actions below.
You might want to use it to make an initial plan with your team and then read on further to flesh out the details with more info, links and recommendations.
It runs from easier First Steps that won’t cause a sweat, to Next Level moves that create more change, and Deep Green actions with potential for epic impact.
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Going ‘green’ means prioritising the living planet — putting Earth at the centre, where she belongs. This guide is here to support you in making this fundamental change as deeply as possible in your approach to music and life.
This isn’t a book to read cover to cover. Find the advice you need in any chapter you like. At the same time, it’s best to think about Chapters 1 and 2 as you read anything else. When we separate ‘environmental issues’ from human issues like individualism, discrimination and colonisation, we can only ever create shallow change.
That means if you’ve come here just aiming to ‘reduce your personal footprint’ (Chapters 3-8), you’re missing the biggest opportunity of this work. As author (and self-confessed ‘climate hypocrite’) Sami Grover says: “We are not each on an individual journey to slash our footprint to zero. We are on a collective mission to shift the only true footprint that matters: that of society as a whole”.
So please go ahead and use Chapters 3-8 to radically reduce your footprint. You’ll find loads of tips and links here. And you’ll learn about yourself and our world as you go. But as you do, Chapter 2 (Speaking Up) will support you to amplify your impact, and Chapter 1 (First Nations First) is there to offer support in the bigger work of shifting power, changing our cultures, and healing our relationship with Country.
We’ve broken it into eight chapters:
Header: photo: Aliaksei
Lost Lands Bottle Library. Photo: Green Music Australia
Lisa Mitchell at Sound Country 2022 Official Launch. Photo: Richard Clifford
DRMNGNOW: photo: artist
