On the most recent sailing of Jam Cruise, the annual music-festival-at-sea powered by driving beats, unique collaborations, enthusiastic dancing and a never-ending supply of smiles, the MSC Poesia visited ports in Haiti and Jamaica and partnered with various organizations via Positive Legacy, on several humanitarian and environmental outreach projects in both communities.

In Haiti, Positive Legacy teamed up with Soles4Souls to deliver 12,200 pairs of shoes. Also with the help of Jam Cruise passengers, Positive Legacy donated 2,000 pairs of new socks; both the shoes and socks will be distributed to Haitian communities in need for months to come. The project was made possible by contributions from One World Running and Nike, and donations from Jam Cruise passengers.

“Our mission has always been to help individuals improve their lives through the gift of footwear,” said Wayne Elsey, Founder and CEO of Soles4Souls. “We couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome than 12,000 lives changed through the hope that proper footwear provides,” he added.

Positive Legacy says that an important part of their mission is moving communities toward sustainability. In that tradition, Positive Legacy partnered with Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods and Trees, Water & People, to seed  6,000 citrus trees in Labadee, Haiti.  The effort, driven by the boat’s 6,000 passengers represented the festival’s most ambitious carbon offsetting effort to date.

In addition to the two efforts detailed above, Positive Legacy is also providing $9,000 to Haiti Village Health to improve sanitary conditions at their clinic, which had been providing primary care services to 25,000 people without any running water. Construction of a well and septic system is currently under way, and the money will also go to building bathrooms with plumbing to sinks and toilets, as well as to putting a new roof on the clinic.

Photo credits: Dave Vann

Harmony Festival celebrates the latest trends in health, music, arts, ecology, and spirituality.  In its 33rd year, the festival brought over 35,000 attendees and a lineup that included Primus, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Michael Franti & Spearhead, and hundreds more speakers, performers, and vendors.

Besides the fact that all organic waste was taken to a local worm farm, the green highlight of this festival is its Eco-Village where hands-on workshops, demonstrations, and community building opportunities are abundant.

Attractions at this year’s Eco-Village included cob building, rainwater harvesting, bicycle-powered composting, a solar powered oven, the Earth Peace Mandala Project, and an open-mic where the sustainably-minded spat rhymes.

New to the Village this year was the Sustainable Living Roadshow, a caravan of educators and entertainers who tour the country in a fleet of renewable fuel vehicles and introduce sustainable living strategies to communities.

“People who come and see what we’re up to can actually activate on a local level,” said SLR Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Jonathan Youtt.  “We turn them on with a fun, creative experience, in a festival environment, but then they can plug in to the local resources. We’re always including the local green movement that happens to be present.  Some communities are strong, other communities are still fledgling, but we’ll reach out to everyone and try to bring them into the fold”

Traditional Skills Demo and Workshop

Rainwater Harvesting

Patagonia has always been known as a company with a strong environmental ethic. In addition to its internal business operations, since 1985, the Ventura, California-based outdoor sports apparel company has donated 1 percent of its profit to environmental causes annually. And last year, that came to a healthy $3.5 million.  But with a new music site that ties proceeds of songs donated by artists like Pearl Jam, Ziggy Marley and Jack Johnson together with environmental organizations like Conservation International, Jamaica Environment Trust and The Kokua Hawai’i Foundation, respectively, Patagonia hopes to sell about 1 million downloads during the first six months, boosting the company’s charitable contributions by more than 50 percent in one year.

The Patagonia Music Collective project has a simple model with a clear message: “Buy a song, benefit the environment.” Musicians donate an exclusive song which can then only be bought via iTunes for 99 cents.  Environmental groups of the artists’ choosing then get to keep the proceeds (after iTunes takes their cut).

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and possible inspiration for Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World,” said he hopes fans see their favorite artists supporting the environment and want to get involved themselves.

“The groups these musicians are supporting are the ones that are ultimately going to save the planet,” said Chouinard. “Patagonia’s hopeful other musicians will see that by just donating a song they can easily provide their favorite enviro group with a new stream of financing.”

Although you can purchase them individually, the tracks will also be organized into compilation albums and sold as CDs. Other artists and their environmental organization of choice on the first two compilations include:

Bonnie Raitt and Jon Cleary (Earth Justice), John Scofield (Pesticide Action Network North America),  moe. (water.org), The Bad Plus (Defenders of Wildlife), Zac Brown Band, (Urban Farming), Blitzen Trapper (SOLV), Mason Jennings (Freedom to Roam), Piers Faccini (Environmental Justice Foundation), Brett Dennen (Tuolumne River Trust), Sun Kil Moon (The Ohio River Way), Philip Glass (Sierra Club, Canada), Umphrey’s McGee (Climate Cycle), RaRa Riot, (The Conservation Alliance), Ben Solee (Kentuckians for the Commonwealth), Spoek Mathambo (H.O.P.E Foundation), Toad the Wet Sprocket (South Coast Habitat Restoration), Abigail Washburn (Jane Goodall’s work in China), Brandi Carlile (Honor the Earth) and Maroon 5 (Reverb).

Every week, four new tracks from both newcomers and established artists will be released. Some of those upcoming artists include Drive By Truckers, Disco Biscuits, Los Lobos, and O.A.R.

Hat tip: GOOD

This Infographic was produced by The Musicians Guide.

If U2 or the Rolling Stones had been performing on his cow shed roof, the Glastonbury Festival supremo Michael Eavis could hardly have been more excited. “It’s fantastic. This is the best fun I’ve had here for ages,” he said. “We had to make a big statement – and that is what we’ve done.”

Eavis’ statement is an “array” of 1,116 solar panels installed on the roof of that cowshed – nicknamed the Mootel. To the sound of a musician called Harriet playing Here Comes The Sun on the vibraphone (deemed suitable because its aluminium bars resemble solar panels), Eavis today unveiled what is believed to be the biggest private solar electric generating system in the UK.

The photovoltaic (PV) modules will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 40 homes annually. Power generated will be used, in the first instance, for Eavis’ Worthy Farm and any left over will be fed into the National Grid.

Wearing shorts on a chilly but perfectly blue Somerset day, Eavis said: “We had to make a major statement because we use so much power. This has brought us one big step closer to our goal of operating the farm as ecologically as possible.” The 1,500-acre site effectively turns into a small city at festival time with more than 200 diesel-powered generators hauled into place to make sure bands can play, food-and-drink suppliers can operate and the place is lit up at night.

Much has been done already. Eavis and his team have built reservoirs so water does not have to be brought on site and linked into local sewerage systems so human waste does not have to be carted off. They recycle all they can and encourage people not to drive if they can help it. But on a busy night they need up to 15 megawatts of power to make sure everything runs smoothly. Eavis felt they were still “losing the argument” so when he built the new cow shed seven years ago, he made sure its roof sloped gently southwards and was strong enough to support 20 tonnes of solar panels.

He has been impressed by how easy it has been. The bank lent him most of the money and the government’s feed-in tariff – a subsidy for small-scale renewable energy generation – has meant it makes economic sense to launch the project. He should earn £60,000 a year from the project.

Eavis’s cow shed, which enjoys a fine view of the pyramid stage – skeletal at this time of year – and Glastonbury Tor in the far distance, now generates up to 200 kilowatts of power. It should also save around 100 tonnes of carbon a year. He expects to make the money he has invested back in nine years.

Lucy Brooking Clark, green initiatives co-ordinator for the Glastonbury Festival, said it was an “amazing” day. “It feels like one big step for Glastonbury today. It’s been four or five years in the planning. We have to constantly look at how we can make the festival more sustainable – we have to keep raising the bar.”

Steve Riches, a planning engineer for Western Power Distribution, which makes sure the electricity generated on the roof reaches the National Grid, said it was a “symbolic day.”

Riches said: “I think other farmers and landowners will look at what Michael Eavis has done here and try to do the same. I think this is an important step.”

Next week, the Farming Futures project, which works to inform farmers about climate change, will be hosting a workshop with Eavis at Worthy Farm for others thinking of investing in solar panels. Bill Egan, who for the last 26 years has made sure Worthy Farm has all the power it needs for the festival (mainly by bringing in all those generators), was trying to work out whether he would still have a job for a few years to come.

However, festival is so energy-hungry though that he concluded he would. Using the power generated on the cow shed roof would probably allow only six temporary diesel generators to be lost. As Eavis bounded from interview to interview, Egan calculated that they would need between 50,000 and 100,000sq m of solar panels to be sure of generating enough electricity. “You’d lose a lot of camping space for that. I think my job is safe for a while.”

But he said they had already thought about how best to use the new source of electricity, perhaps using it to charge generators that are used for long periods, for example by crew members who are on site for months before and after the festival. “We’ll start getting those cables in now,” he said.

Phil Miller, the infrastructure manager for the site, said they were always on the look-out for new ways of cutting the festival’s carbon footprint. “I heard about an idea of using urine to generate power. That could work for us. Or what about putting solar panels on marquees? We have to keep trying.”

Eavis is already thinking about the future. “We’ve got the best festival in the world and the best solar power system in the country – so far. We’ve got to keep pushing, trying to do more.” And with that he was off to make sure the panels were performing properly – and the cows beneath them were as content as he was.

Energy farmers

Farmers across the country, but especially in the south-west of England, are becoming more interested in the idea of supplementing their income through solar power.

Claire Wyatt, of Farming Futures, a government-funded organisation that helps farmers cope with and prepare for climate change, said farmers were “hungry” for information.

“I think it’s because the technology has improved, and so you no longer need the perfect site, but the feed-in tariff [under which landowners are paid for the energy they supply to the National Grid] has shown them it is economically valuable.”

It was standing-room only at an event held in Oxfordshire last week, and there are 200 people on a waiting list for a Farming Futures session at Glastonbury site Worthy Farm next week.

Companies that supply solar panels have started to organise seminars for farmers in the West Country – the Californian-based SunPower Corporation recently held well-attended events in Somerset.

One of the most eye-catching schemes revealed earlier this year was a £40m network of solar farms in Cornwall. If the network is built, it would triple the UK’s current solar generating capacity.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Photo by Matt Cardy/ © 2010 Getty Images/PicApp

A new audio book by the former Talking Heads singer explores the liberation, exhilaration, and connection biking provides.

Although it can mean exposure to the elements, bike commuting gives one the opportunity to observe the inner rhythms of a city’s geography and population in a way that cabs and buses never could.

In the 1980′s David Byrne started to explore New York City by bike, and twenty years ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them with him when traveling around the world.

Bicycle Diaries chronicles David’s observations and insights — what he is seeing, whom he is meeting, what he is thinking about — as he pedals through and engages with some of the world’s major cities.

And this isn’t just any old audio book, with an author’s voice droning on and on. First, the book is available in a plethora of formats, including NPR shows and individually-downloadable podcasts. Second, Byrne took great care to incorporate scene sounds so that you can imagine the hustle and bustle of the cities he ride in with great clarity.

Throughout the chapters, Bryne has thoughts to share about fashion, architecture, cultural isolation, globalization, and the radical new ways that some cities, like his home town, are becoming more bike-friendly — all conveyed with a highly personal mix of humor, curiosity, and humanity.

To get a sample of this innovative use of technology, you can download the introduction for free  here.

Phish, String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon and Big Heat Todd and the Monsters raise $300,000 for firefighters and victims.

Saturday night’s epic benefit for the victims that suffered from the Fourmile Canyon Fire — and the firefighters that fought it — west of Boulder Colorado in September, is a perfect example of how activism can snowball. The Fourmile Canyon Revival, originally slated to be held at the relatively small Boulder Theater, kept growing because more and more bands wanted to help out. And when all four members of the band Phish, who were slated to begin a three-night run Colorado run, said they would also like to be involved, the event had to be moved to the 6,500-seat 1st Bank Center in nearby Broomfield, Colorado — and it sold out in under an hour.

But it wasn’t just the artists (and the fans who bought tickets at $60 a pop) who were donating time and money to the effort. The venue covered costs associated with producing a show of this size including event producers, security staff, backstage services, production elements such as sound and lights, artwork and printing for event t-shirts and posters that will raise additional funds.

In addition to the $300,000 raised from ticket sales, several thousand more dollars was raised by the army of volunteers collecting donations outside the venue before the show.

“The idea is to fill the gap where insurance and government won’t make people whole,” Conrad Lattes of the Boulder Mountain Fire Relief Fund told the Boulder Daily Camera.

Many of the homes destroyed in the fire were underinsured, as was the fire equipment lost in the blaze.

Sixty percent of the donations to the Mountain Fire Fund will be donated to the Boulder Mountain Fire Relief Fund, established to provide support to individuals, families, fire departments and community organizations severely impacted by the fire, twenty percent will be given to the Foothills United Way and twenty percent to the Volunteer Connection.

You can still Donate to the Mountain Fire Fund or text your pledges to 303-720-7292.

This article highlighting the Haitian earthquake relief efforts by reggae band Steel Pulse, first appeared at Ecopolitology in August, 2010.

As the dust was still settling after the massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti on January 12, frontman for legendary reggae band Steel Pulse, David Hinds, was already sitting down to write a song about the catastrophe — a song that will now be used to help electrify the country’s healthcare infrastructure.

“Because the initial media coverage has waned considerably,” Hinds explained last week, “we want to revitalize the focus on Haiti’s plight.”

In light of that effort, Hinds and Steel Pulse announced it was working with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) and Partners In Health (PIH) and will donate all proceeds from their new song, “Hold on [4 Haiti],” to the solar electrification of PIH clinics in Haiti.

“We wrote ‘Hold On [4 Haiti]‘ to support the people of Haiti through the work being done by the Solar Electric Light Fund and Partners In Health. We’ve got to make a real difference on the ground — that’s what this project is all about.”

According to project organizers, 100 percent of the proceeds from the song will support three critically important causes: bringing solar energy to the developing world; providing healthcare for the poor, and; helping rebuild Haiti. “It’s a triple whammy,” SELF executive director, Bob Freling, told me in a phone call last week. “Relying on diesel is just not an option,” he said.

Freling explained that SELF hopes to electrify all 12 health centers for Partners In Health in Haiti. “We were already working on electrifying PIH clinics,” said Freling, “but in the wake of the earthquake we were requested by PIH to accelerate our timeline for bringing solar power to all of their sites in Haiti.”

“A quarter of humanity has absolutely no access to electricity, said Freling. “130 years after the invention of the incandescent lamp, a quarter of humanity has never turned on a light bulb.”

For the Haiti project, SELF reached out to their community of donors around the world including solar panel manufacturers SolarWorld, Suntech, Q-Cells and Canadian Solar, in addition to battery-makers Trojan and East Penn Manufacturing, and inverter manufacturer Outback Power. But the in-kind donations are only part of the equation, the project needs cash too. And Freling explained to me that instead of fixing the price of the song download (and ceding a sizable fraction to iTunes), they are making the download freely available and allowing people to determine the size of their donation.

Learn more about the project, donate, and download the Steel Pulse song at: www.holdon4haiti.org.

Watch Paul Farmer of PIH and Bob Freling of SELF discuss the solar electrification of health clinics in Haiti:

Photos: 1. Some rights reserved by gabba; 2. SELF

Fourmile Canyon Revival to benefit firefighters and victims.

Never shying away from an opportunity to pick for a good cause, Colorado’s music community announced late last week that it would come together for the “Fourmile Canyon Revival,” a night of music to raise funds for individuals and families directly affected by the devastating Fourmile Canyon Fire near Boulder.

The fast-moving Fourmile Canyon Fire fire west of Boulder burned about 165 homes — making it the most devastating fire in terms of property damage in Colorado history.

Presented by radio station KBCO in Boulder, the benefit concert will take place on Saturday, October 9th at 1st Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado.

Featuring Colorado’s own The String Cheese Incident, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Vince Herman & Drew Emmitt, the Fourmile Canyon Revival will also include members of Phish – Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, Page McConnell and Trey Anastasio — who kick off their fall tour with three sold-out shows at the same venue on the following evening.

As Phish frontman Anastasio mentioned during their recent engagement in Telluride, Colorado was the site of Phish’s first extended tour outside of the Northeast, and the band has always felt a deep connection to the community.

All proceeds from the concert will go directly to the Boulder Mountain Fire Relief Fund. The Fund supports the local volunteer fire departments that courageously fought the recent fire and the mountain residents whose lives were directly impacted by this disaster and are in critical need of financial support.

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With music festivals in the U.S. continuing to try and one-up each other in terms of their sustainability initiatives, one festival in Norway may have beaten them all.

Not an enormous festival, at least as compared with monster festivals like Bonnaroo, this year’s Oya festival, held on August 10 to 14 in Medieval Park in Gamlebyen, the oldest part part of Oslo, attracted about 16,000 visitors daily. But what the festival is proudest of is not the number of people it let through the gates every day, nor is it the star-studded lineup including acts like Pavement, Iggy & The Stooges, LCD Soundsystem and The Flaming Lips, Oya is proudest of its work to be one of the greenest music festivals on the planet. This year, every watt of electricity used at the festival site was powered by renewable energy from a nearby hydroelectric dam, making it the only festival of its size anywhere that can make that claim. But festival organizers didn’t stop there.

Litter at the Festival was sorted into 14 different categories, food was organic and sourced locally and electric and hydrogen-powered cars were used by staff on the site. But perhaps the ultimate innovation came via those ubiquitous festival porta-potties:  sewage was specially treated, turned into biomethane gas and used to power buses in the city.

As the summer festival season winds down in the Northern Hemisphere and festival organizers begin planning for their 2011 events, let’s hope that Oya organizers get a few phone calls asking them about their innovative initiatives. And who knows, maybe next summer some of them will be coming to a festival near you.

Hat tip: Planet Green; BBC
Photo: Some rights reserved by Natur og Ungdom