The World's First 100% Green Record Label

copyright blog.wired.com
Published, 1 August 2006, California

With Al Gore's documentary/horror movie An Inconvenient Truth impressing generating so much debate and heat waves plaguing many regions of the globe, now seems like as good a time as any for conscious entities to think about minimizing CO2 production. But since so much of the stuff we like to make and do involves the creation of CO2 emissions, this can involve some tough trade-offs. There's another way.

Yesterday, Sub Pop Records became the first record label in the world to "go green" [see update below] by reducing its effective CO2 output to zero. This would be technically impossible, even if they went 100% digital in their sales, without an organization called the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which lets people or companies buy "green tags," – vouchers that help subsidize the use of renewable energy, which is generally more expensive to produce than dirtier sources.

Purchasers of green tags still power everything in their homes or businesses using the same old sources, but by purchasing these green tags, they're able to offset their CO2 production by introducing more renewable energy into the energy pool through their subsidy.

If you're interested in buying green tags, use BEF's calculator to figure out how much you'd owe. Then, you can buy green tags in $20 (99% wind, 1% solar) or $24 (90% wind, 10% solar) increments. It would evidently cost the average American $16.67 per month to offset their CO2 production completely.

Kudos to Sub Pop for bringing attention to this option and thanks to Ryan at 27B Stroke 6 for the heads-up.

Update: Sarah Krasley, from the Center for Resource Solutions, writes:

"Sub Pop isn't the first green label, they are the first Green-e certified [link added -ed.] record label. It's amazing what a little '-e' will do! The environmental community takes this stuff really seriously, so I just thought I'd flag it. Green can mean anything from: recycling to energy conservation, to composting. Green-e means that the company uses a certified renewable energy product like the Bonneville Environmental Foundation's green tags."

Point taken. It's also worth pointing out that the first album featuring the Green-e logo is Kelley Stoltz's Below the Branches.

Posted by eliotvb

https://www.greentagsusa.org/GreenTags/
http://www.subpop.com/