Tara Redavid

Not a lot of people think about it, but a touring band leaves a massive footprint. Not only are they constantly traveling around the country in a gas guzzling tour bus, but the venue is devouring energy to power the show and the fans are each driving a car to and from the venue, pumping even more carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. It’s a sad reality but a reality none the less but unlike most touring outfits, The Vans Warped Tour is aware of what’s happening are are trying to do the most they can to limit the damage they cause to the environment.

That’s where Tara Redavid comes in. She’s the Sustainability Coordinator at the Vans Warped Tour which means it’s her job to make sure the tour doesn’t leave too big of a carbon footprint when they pass through your town. On top of organizing dozens of volunteers in every city, Redavid is always on the look out for new ways to make the tour more energy efficient – from using plant starch forks in catering to a solar powered stage. Before the 2010 edition of the tour got underway, we talked to Redavid about everything that goes into making sure the tour stays clean, their goals in educating the public about recycling programs and how you, as a fan, can get involved.

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Bobby: So what exactly do you do as the sustainability coordinator?

Tara: Well, we bring in twenty volunteers in every city. Those twenty volunteers get in to the show for free and they get a free t-shirt, kind of VIP access. In exchange for that, they help us pick through the trash. We sort through basically every garbage pail on site. We lay out the recycling bins and then we work with the venue and coordinate with the local municipality to make sure everything gets recycled.

Bobby: So the tour’s very environmentally friendly then.

Tara: The tour’s super environmentally friendly. All our production busses are fuelled with bio-diesel. Have you seen the solar powered stage?

Bobby: No I haven’t.

Tara: Yeah, we have the only solar powered stage in the country. It’s awesome, it’s totally solar powered. We recycle on all the buses. All the catering is green and compost-able takeaway, plant starch forks. It’s a main component of the tour, so it’s kind of awesome.

Bobby: So who spearheaded this? Was it you or was it Kevin? Who came up with the idea to make Warped Tour more environmentally friendly?

Tara: Kevin was kind of doing it for years and then I think he put something up on the website and found someone who created the program. Then three years ago I came in and started helping her and then last year I took over totally.

And then that’s Mike [pointing to Mike who just walked up]. Another thing we do is we give away a trip to the most eco-friendly band on the tour. Mike’s from the band the A.K.A.’s and last year they won the trip. This year he got hired and now he’s back.

Bobby: How did you deem them the most eco-friendly band? What are the specifications they must pass?

Tara: Oh, it’s a tight ship. We run a tight ship. But the A.K.A.’s, they started out the tour ahead of everyone else. They co-ordinated with Britta and got filters for every bus, reusable water bottles for every bus and this year, Keep A Beast – one of the non-profits – coordinated the bottles for the tour.

That’s Chris [who also just walked by], he worked at Eco last year.

Bobby: But not this year?

Tara: Not this year. This year he’s taking over the non-profit areas.

Bobby: You were saying that you were working with Brett from the Riot Before to set up something?

Tara: Oh yes, one of the other things we do is we have this magazine that we started last year. It’s kind of like an old school zine, its almost handwritten, on recycled paper; it’s printed by Jak Prints. It’s an awesome, full color magazine and it has artwork and articles from bands. So we got a bunch of different bands – some that are on the tour, like Polar Bear Club’s tour manager wrote an article for it. Brett from Riot Before wrote something, John Joseph from the Cro-Mags wrote something which is awesome.

Basically the point is that Kevin Lyman is really interested and wants to give kids tools to go home and make changes in their own community. Like we come in and try not to be an environmental disaster and then we leave the city but what happens after we leave?

It’s kind of like the old school where you’d go to a show, find out about bands you didn’t know, find about causes you didn’t know. Like the non-profit area is huge, that’s a big part of the tour.

Bobby: So you’re trying to educate the fans; not just to make sure that you guys are being environmentally friendly but also to make sure that they can continue to do it.

Tara: That’s a cool thing about the tour. We’ll have bands that start the tour and don’t really know or care about recycling or whatever and then through coming out through the non profit area and helping us out, they change the way they tour and that affects their fans. Giving them the tools to go out on the road and live green at home and on the road.

Bobby: I remember – I think it was last year – the Weakerthans started doing this eco-friendly touring system. Where basically they sat down and calculated how much of a carbon footprint they produced touring and not only what they produced but also what all their fans produce driving to the show. Like you have ten thousand kids all driving here, that’s a massive amount of pollution just from them. So what they did was they would say that if you came to the merch table and said you took the bus or you carpooled, they would give you a pin or just something small. Is there any motivation from Warped Tour to convince kids to carpool, to take the bus or public transport?

Tara: Yeah, one of the things we just started doing is if you go to the website, for every date where there’s a public transport option we have the directions to each venue on the website. Then we partnered with PickUpPal.org and they can set up car pooling.

Also, on site, if they recycle bottles and cans they get free t-shirts. There are different contests set up all around.

Bobby:  Yeah, I remember seeing that; you see people picking up bottles and handing them in. Like “okay, I have twenty bottles, now give me a t-shirt.”

Tara: Yeah. A lot of bands started doing their own contests too where if you brought in twenty bottles or cans, you got five dollars off a CD. You’d get a CD half price if you recycled. The A.K.A.’s gave out free patches if you brought stuff in. You could be entered to win a spot on stage, all sorts of little things.

Last year we calculated, in a conservative estimate, we collected thirty-eight thousand pounds of bottles and cans and cardboard. So between that, the bio-diesel fuelling and everything, it’s like several hundred thousand pounds of carbon reduction. A lot of tours would do carbon offsets but I think its changing the behaviour that’s important.

Bobby: Because with carbon offsets you’re still polluting, you’re just making up for it.

Tara: Exactly.

Bobby: Like “well, I planted a tree somewhere in the middle of a forest.”

Tara: Which is still good; but for us, the offset is a good thing but we’re more interested in changing the behaviours of people on the tour and the people that come to the tour – so for a long term difference rather than doing the same thing and expecting others to take care of it.

Bobby:  Do you think, as a whole, the people who go to the Warped Tour are quite receptive to the program? Or are they more “I just wanna do whatever I wanna do”?

Tara: It’s kind of surprising because I get thousands of emails before the show from people that want to help us out.

Bobby: But do people want to help you out to help you out or to get free stuff?

Tara: This is the thing. I was almost bitter about because they just want to get in for free; but I’ve seen it where they come to the show and they don’t even watch the bands a lot of the time. Like they’ll go watch their favourite bands and they’ll be eight hours a day just digging through the trash just because they care.

Then we partnered with Incredibly Green which is a website where kids can win free tickets if they send in information on whatever their green activity was – like if they did something in their community. So it’s an incentive but I think a lot of them would do it anyway, honestly.

A lot of the fans start out doing it for one reason because they want to win something or get a prize but then we see them doing it long term. We have them coming back year after year telling us they’ve changed how they do things. So I’m okay if they start out for a free tshirt and leave actually caring about it. That’s a fair trade for me.

Bobby: Yeah, it’s just one t-shirt and hopefully they’ll make up for it by changing the way they do things.

Tara: Oh, they will, they will.

Bobby: They better, or else you’ve failed.

Tara: noooooo!! [laughs]

Bobby: Do you think that’s also one good thing about the atmosphere of the Warped Tour? That people are very open to different ideas and open to see different types of bands but also willing to open their mind to different types of ideologies?

Tara: Yeah, I think it’s kind of unlike anything else going on. At the core of it, Kevin Lyman is like an old punk rocker and a lot of the crew is and a lot of the bands are. There’s some kids in bright neon that have never heard of the bands that mean a lot to me but there’s some kids out here that come out and might see a band for the first time that might change his life and maybe at the same time find about a charity that they’ve never heard of. Our non-profits village is huge. Our eco thing is so huge, it’s like such a center piece of the tour that it’s almost impossible to come here and not learn something new, find out about something you didn’t know about. In that way, I think it’s still pretty awesome and I still get excited about it.

I remember coming to the tour when I was like… a lot of years ago and I went home with a bag of stuff and you’d go home and see the sticker and you’d go to the – well, we didn’t have websites then – but you’d mail in for something you wanted to find out about. You would never have known about it if you hadn’t come here, it’s kind of awesome.

Bobby: It’s more eye opening.

Tara: Yeah, kids save up for it. When I was younger, this was like a big part of my summer. It was like “yes, the Warped Tour! I’m going to go to Warped Tour and see thirty bands! I’m going to go see Green Day and marry Billie Joe!”

Bobby: That is generally the attitude but now you have something to learn from it as well.

Tara: Exactly. It’s kind of a nice balance.

Bobby: You also said that you have a large selection of not for profits, is there a lot of organizations that end up being turned away because there’s not enough room? Like what’s the selection process for a not for profit to join the Warped Tour? How does that work?

Tara: As long we have the space, we basically accommodate everyone. In each city we bring it local non-profits. We have, I’m going to say my guess is we usually have around 10 non-profits that are out full time. Then, in addition to that, in every city have a huge twenty by twenty tent where Chris, our coordinator, will coordinate just as many groups as we can accommodate in the space that we have in every city.

So it’s cool because you have these big international non-profits and then you have the local non-profits, so it’s another way to engage people in their own community. They can find out about what’s going on in their actual city.

Bobby: The whole “Think Globally, Act Locally” idea.

Tara: Exactly. I still get really excited about it. By the end of the summer, you’ve reached hundreds of thousands of people with all these new ideas.

Bobby: And also with the local companies, because sometimes you hear all these big ideas and you’re like ‘well, that’s not going to effect me in any way.” It’s too big an idea to wrap your head around whereas if you have the local one you can see “that will affect my neighbourhood. That will affect my friend’s brother.” You can see it on a more personal level.

Tara: Exactly. Yeah, that’s really awesome.

Bobby: Well I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot. I’ve learned quite a bit about the environmental and public relations aspects of the Warped Tour, so thank you very much. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Tara: Just check out the Warped Tour’s website. We’re going to be doing videos with the bands all summer longs, showing how they’ve changed their behaviour and how they’ve become more green, who’s littering and getting beaten up for it, etcetera. That will be on WarpedTour.com.

Bobby: Are you still accepting applications for people to volunteer at later dates or is it all booked?

Tara: There is still some room for volunteers. They can check out the Warped Tour website and there’s an eco tab at the top and it’ll go to IncrediblyGreen.org and that’s where we have our own little Warped Tour coverage. It’s all videos and it’ll all exclusive songs and stuff that people donate.

Bobby: Like acoustic sets or little behind the scenes footage type of stuff.

Tara: Yeah and we have a Warped Eco twitter so if they check that out, sometimes we’ll announce a secret set that you can only get in if you recycle something.