A band on tour has a pretty nasty carbon footprint.  There’s the gas burned up by their tour bus(es) or van, the industrial-farmed junk food they scarf down on the road, and the plastic beverage bottles they trash in dressing room garbage bins, not to mention the non-biodegradable needles and wasted groupies left backstage.

Over the past few years, a number of major acts have joined in the fight against climate change, lending their marquee names and donating a portion of their profits to environmental campaigns and organizations.

But I’m often more inspired by smaller-scale efforts, the kind of action that can be a part of our everyday lives. To borrow some terminology from Malcolm Gladwell, musicians, particularly cult favorites, are the influencers who are crucial to pushing a fringe “trend” to the tipping point, when it’s adopted by a mainstream population.

With that in mind, check out this video from The Duhks, a Grammy-nominated, bluesy, folksy, country-rock group from Canada that spends 70% of the time on the road (with hat-tip to Mother Jones).  The band’s environmentally-conscious approach to music-making and music-selling, which they’ve dubbed the Green Duhks Sustainability Project, is a combination of the basic stuff a lot of us are doing, as well as some things that are specific to the industry:

• Running the tour bus on biofuel
• Recycling
• Using eco-friendly toiletries
• Using reusable water bottles
• Eating local, farm-raised produce
• Offsetting some carbon emissions by purchasing credits
• Selling “eco-friendly” band merchandise, including CD packaging and concert apparel
• “Partnering” with a handful of environmental organizations
• Raising awareness through their lyrics, website, and this music video, for their song “Fast Paced World”

On a personal  note, one sun-drenched shot in this video filled me with happy nostalgia: the woman driving, her left leg sitting comfortably in the groove where the dashboard meets the windshield (at 2:20).  I certainly don’t miss owning a car, but I’ve got to admit, there’s nothing like that feeling of ease on the open road.  I look forward to the day when we can take trips like that with our electric cars equipped with long-lasting batteries and charged with electricity from renewable sources.