The band engaged an “earth accountant” to help calculate the carbon emissions of recording and packaging their fifth record Kaligula, which debuted at No. 3 on the ARIA charts in August.Frontman Jake Taylor said before they made the record, they measured its carbon footprint in minute detail.They counted the output of power sockets and light bulbs, their meals, freight of equipment and flights and car travel.“I couldn’t really pull from some sort of how-to that I could find on the internet so I got a power reader to look at the obvious things and measured each outlet,” he explained.“Airlines are the huge one; I thought it’d be a lot, but that took up almost more than half of the total carbon footprint because we were recording this album in America.”Their carbon consultant Grace Gallagher, based in their Byron Bay hometown, helped calculate the Kaliyuga recording would amount to a footprint of 26.37 tonnes of CO2e.In Hearts Wake fully financed the recording and then worked with the UNFD label to find environmentally friendly solutions to vinyl and packaging.While vinyl sales have soared in popularity over the past five years, most fans would be unaware that manufacturing the black plastic is a highly polluting process.The band and label found a vinyl producer who used less toxic plastic pellets and local biofuel to power their plant.The Kaliyuga sleeves and booklets were made from 100 per cent recycled cardboard, vegan inks and paper-based tape.“We found out the main supplier for the plastic pellets for all the vinyl plants around the world comes out of Thailand from a factory … who are one of the biggest pollutants in the world,” Taylor said.“So who knew that all the vinyl we love and collect is part of the problem … well, at least not part of the solution.”Making carbon-friendly vinyl isn’t cheap. Taylor said their initiatives doubled the price, so they produced a limited run of the Kaliyuga LPs. But that resulted in an unexpected bonus for fans.“We sold them for almost double the price of a regular vinyl record, $50 as opposed to a regular $30 and that asked a lot of the fans. It’s a huge risk, and we didn’t know how it would be received,” he said.“They all sold which is hugely encouraging that our fan base were behind us like this, which is a really good piece of proof that people really do care, they even care in a recession, and they showed that they want to spend more for something that is of quality and speaks for something than getting something that’s cheaper just to have one. “Our fans owning that piece of recycled art that is in a limited quantity, it’s actually worth more not just sentimentally, but to resell.”An innovation grant from the AMEX Music Backers Fund will assist the band to finish a documentary of the ambitious project and serve as a how-to for other artists determined to set a climate-conscious example for fans by reducing the environmental impact of recording and touring.Taylor said offsetting the carbon footprint wasn’t the be-all and end-all of the process for musicians.The band invested carbon credits in Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor, have funded the planting of 5000 trees in India and created their own rainforest in the Byron Bay hinterland with the help of friends and fans.“The Australian reforestation project in Western Australia and First Nations land has co-benefits. It wasn’t just about buying carbon credits,” Taylor said.“That aspect of this is superimportant because you can offset all you want all day. If everyone offset, it still wouldn’t create a healthy planet.“It has to be those regenerative practices as well, things that put back into the soil and sequester carbon and then help the animals. So that’s something that I also learned.”Taylor has also been sharing the data from the Kaliyuga case study with FEAT. (Future Energy Artists), a renewable energy investment platform launched by Heidi Lenffer last year.Lenffer, co-founder of Sydney indie rockers Cloud Control, was inspired to start FEAT. after she engaged a carbon consultant in 2017 to help measure the footprint of the band’s 15-date tour of Australia and found it would generate 28 tonnes of carbon emissions.Midnight Oil, Vance Joy, Regurgitator, Big Scary, Peking Duk and Jack River are among the artists who signed up with FEAT. to invest in solar farms in partnership with Future Super.Lenffer plans to relaunch FEAT. next year as the pandemic shutdown of touring meant musicians had no carbon emissions to offset and no money to invest in 2020.She sees the platform not only as a vehicle for green investment for artists wanting to contribute to combating the climate crisis but as vital superannuation for workers in the financially insecure arts industry.“There is a mentality that we are going to come out of COVID doing business differently, which is exactly what it should be,” she said.“We are really finding there’s a broad level of receptiveness, even a welcome, a relief that there’s solutions out there.“I think the appetite in the arts sector for change in climate action and playing live shows in a way that you are creating environmental good will make 2021 a good year for FEAT. to build the movement substantially.” Taylor said as well as inspiring other bands to follow the carbon-neutral template with the documentary, he is on a mission to stop retailers stocking shrink-wrapped CDs and records.And he would like to help set up a national network of “earth accountants” to advise recording artists on how to transition to making green music.“It’s a hugely overwhelming process if you had to do all this stuff without that cheat sheet. I hope that we can make that accessible for others via the documentary,” he said.
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