Making dwell music occasions as environmentally pleasant as doable is a process executed by hundreds of staff who set up photo voltaic panels, transport waste, gather reusable cups, measure vitality use and execute different operational duties. However each worker doing this work finally falls beneath the purview of any given dwell occasion firm’s head of sustainability. Erik Distler is one among them.
As vp of sustainability at AEG, Distler leads the corporate’s company sustainability program. There are executives in related roles at Reside Nation, ASM International and Oak View Group – and collectively, this group is chargeable for greening a big proportion of worldwide occasions and venues. In February, the group – who Distler says all know one another on condition that the sustainability area is comparatively small — appeared collectively in public for the primary time throughout a panel on the inaugural Music Sustainability Summit in Los Angeles.
“The symbolism of us being collectively on that stage is highly effective and hopefully inspiring to the business that we’re cheering one another on and maybe exploring what we are able to do collectively,” says Distler. With the stakes being so excessive, there’s an incentive to share info, he says, significantly on condition that “this work is actually replicable. What you do in a single venue or competition can, barring native infrastructure, be completed anyplace else.”
Distler got here to his position after working in sports activities and leisure sustainability for greater than a decade. At AEG, he and his five-person workforce design and direct sustainability initiatives throughout the corporate’s greater than 25 festivals, in addition to over 50 music venues; 9 arenas and equally sized venues; 4 leisure districts; and greater than 15 excursions thus far.
AEG has had a sustainability program for 15 years, however when Distler joined in October 2021, his process was to “take our program to its subsequent section” amid the worsening local weather disaster, the growing demand for sustainable occasions amongst customers, and new sustainable applied sciences and laws.
“The exterior forces are louder and extra influential than they’ve ever been,” he says. “That’s actually pushing the business ahead in a means that’s making the case for firms to prioritize and dedicate inside groups to grasp this work, construct assets and take motion in a significant means.”
Distler spent his first three months on the job assembly with 50 inside stakeholders to raised perceive the enterprise, learn how to make it extra sustainable and get senior govt buy-in, which he says “was basic and actually paved the way in which to get extra granular with different colleagues.”
From the data collected, he created a strategic framework round sustainability, together with an official imaginative and prescient assertion — “Encourage the world’s many voices to guard our planet” — and a mission assertion declaring that the corporate is “dedicated to working responsibly and to catalyzing the affect of dwell leisure to protect the planet for future generations.”
“It’s vital to have a method on a web page,” Distler says, “and finally a framework that can be utilized to information us transferring ahead.”
This framework additionally features a set of focus areas together with carbon and vitality, waste and supplies water, and stewardship and engagement, together with six guiding rules (“collaboration over competitors” and “talk with transparency and infrequently” amongst them) and 7 pillars: operations, suppliers, staff, followers, communities and partnerships.
These companions embody Schneider Electrical, a French multinational vitality administration firm that AEG has labored with for 14 years for assist with goal setting, technique, vitality sourcing, market intelligence and danger administration. A Greener Future within the U.Ok. and Three Squares Inc. in the US are sustainability consultants, whereas r.World gives reusable cups in all of AEG’s Denver music venues, together with choose venues in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, together with six Goldenvoice festivals. For Coachella and Stagecoach, AEG has donated 44.2 tons of meals to its accomplice Coachella Valley Rescue Mission and 34.6 tons of fabric to the Galilee Middle, which gives clothes and different fundamentals to households within the Coachella Valley.
Distler has additionally sought extra assist. Final yr, he labored to get 4 individuals employed into three newly created sustainability roles. “It’s not unusual {that a} sustainability workforce is small in depend and beneath resourced,” he says. “ What I see as a giant a part of my duty is guaranteeing our division is sound economically and constructing and making the case for workers and assets.”
Along with Distler and his new hires, the workforce additionally features a information and analytics lead chargeable for measuring the impression of AEG occasions and “all the opposite folks that have jobs like these in competition operations that eat, sleep and breathe this.” Moreover, AEG’s employee-led Individuals For The Planet group consists of staff from different elements of the corporate who need to contribute to sustainability tasks.
Altogether, this group is “in all probability fairly emblematic of a sustainability division,” Distler says. “You might have a small core workforce, however you’ve obtained exterior and inside companions that assist get the work completed.”
On condition that Europe has tighter sustainability laws that the U.S., the business there provides good examples of initiatives that may finally be adopted within the States. Final November, AEG’s O2 Enviornment in London launched a inexperienced rider: a finest observe information for sustainable touring and occasions that outlines what the venue is doing in key areas.
“It’s a good way to take a seat with an artist and their administration workforce and determine what we are able to do whereas they’re [at the O2] that’s really sustainable and finally communicated to followers,” Distler says of the information, which was produced in collaboration with U.Ok. primarily based sustainability consultancy A Greener Future.
Distler says his workforce is “continuously” collaborating with artists together with Billie Eilish, who in June 2022 hosted an occasion at The O2 known as Overheated that featured vegan meals and water refill stations together with climate-minded programming. Final April, after studying that rock band Muse “was keen about local weather points,” he says, AEG’s Crypto.com Enviornment made a donation on behalf of the and to the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which works to additional clear tech, local weather motion and the inexperienced economic system within the metropolis.
Distler on web site at Cali Vibes
Courtesy of AEG
AEG made a donation to the L.A. Clear Tech Incubator, which works to additional clear know-how within the metropolis, from AEG’s Crypto.com Enviornment on behalf of the band. Final yr, the workforce additionally labored with Maggie Rogers to measure the carbon footprint related to one among her U.S. tour stops and offered that information to Rogers’ workforce, together with mitigation solutions.
Within the U.S., AEG has launched a complete sustainability program for its Goldenvoice festivals — together with Coachella, Stagecoach, Merciless World and Simply Like Heaven. Specifically, Goldenvoice’s Cali Vibes functions as a testing ground for sustainability initiatives, together with photo voltaic panels that mild parking heaps and the transformation of unpurchased merch into employees uniforms, with these tasks be studied for doable use at different occasions.
“I all the time say that sustainability doesn’t occur inside our workforce,” says Distler. “Issues like waste avoidance or diversion at a competition occur in collaboration with our operation groups, companions and haulers. That requires work that doesn’t finally get completed within the company workplace.”
Whereas the music business is finally chargeable for a tiny fraction of worldwide emissions and waste, Distler is resolute about its impression. He recollects being on a panel in New York final fall alongside sustainability heads from main companies with, he says, “large footprints, like hundreds of thousands of metric tons of emissions.”
And but when it got here to the viewers Q&A, “everyone had questions for me, and nobody had questions for them.” Given its “affect [on] the center and thoughts,” the music business has a duty to concentrate on sustainability, share these initiatives with followers and “create the setting for optimistic, inspiring and uplifting work.”
It helps that Distler “completely” sees actual progress being made, with followers, companions, artists and athletes “placing the fitting degree of stress on the companies to tackle significant motion.” He says lots of the main companies AEG works with are additionally taking up sustainability in a extra targeted means.
“It’s sitting down with companions and saying, ‘What are your focus areas? Your targets? Your aspirations?’” he says. “Then sharing ours and seeing what strains up…seeing the eagerness and willingness of our companions to ideate and brainstorm is actually encouraging, and is signaling that the business is transferring in the fitting path.”
