Ahead of key incoming EU legislation that will impact the industry and the language used in marketing and communications around climate sustainability, Music Climate Pact project manager Roxy Erickson encourages the music business to lead in embracing the opportunity…
“We’re fully clean powered – that resonates so much with me. And it’s cool to me because it’s actually harder to do the right thing than we think. There’s always so many reasons not to do the right thing, and so many roadblocks, and we tell ourselves it’s too expensive to do the right thing…but you just f****** did the right thing Bristol!”
This was artist Lorde speaking about Forwards Festival, Bristol last month, who praised the city and the event for successfully eliminating traditional, polluting diesel generators to power the main stage.
In just over two weeks, on September 27, the ECGT (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition) directive starts to apply across the EU. This new legislation will have a vital role to play in targeting the growing issue of ‘greenwashing’ by banning vague environmental claims and uncertified sustainability labelling.
It doesn't only catch EU-based companies. If you sell a record to an EU consumer from a UK webstore, you too are in scope. And if you're UK-only, the CMA can already fine you 10% of your global turnover, without going near a court if you don’t follow their rules.
But here's what also actually worries me. Not that anyone breaks these rules. That people read them, decide it's all too risky, and quietly delete the sustainability page. There's a word for that now. Greenhushing. And it's the worst possible response.
Far better to look back in five years and say "we got some of that wrong, and here's what we learned", than to look back and have nothing to learn from and no fans listening.
Our chain starts at the top, with manufacturing. If the people making the compound, pressing the record, printing the t-shirt, aren't giving us numbers, nobody downstream has them. Not the label, not the shop, not the artist, not the fans. You can't make a claim that you can't evidence, and you can't evidence what nobody measured.
Nobody is asking anyone to be perfect. Billie Eilish has made enormous changes to how she tours. Some of it she'll do differently in two years, and she won't be ashamed of the old version. She isn't going quiet today on the off-chance that tomorrow she finds a better way. So, you are allowed to be at version one: say what you've done, say what you haven't worked out yet, and improve it next time. If you wait for some imaginary finish line, you'll never say anything at all.
And if we get this wrong, it isn't the pressing plant in the headline. It's the artist's face and our industry reputation on the line.
The biggest companies in this industry already have to decarbonise. SECR (Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting) has had large UK companies reporting energy and carbon for years, with CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) covering the major companies. The hard work already has a reporting obligation with a legal deadline on it, and those don’t go away on the 27th September.
Teach a fan to look for the eco-label, they like it, they buy it, and that product just became commercially viable
Roxy Erickson
ECGT will govern what you can say. It doesn't touch what you're required to do. You’re not removing the hard work by not talking about it. That sits in completely different law.
So, if we're all doing the work anyway, why do it in silence? Talk about it, and someone else learns from you instead of solving it from scratch. You get the credit. And next time is easier, economy-of-scale starts to build, because others have walked the same path ahead of you.
And the one I really care about. Fans learn what to look for. Teach a fan to look for the eco-label, they like it, they buy it, and that product just became commercially viable. So, it gets made again. And the next pressing is easier to justify. And eventually it's simply how we do things. Smoothly, and profitably, with the audience brought along.
The alternative is we say nothing for years, the rules tighten, and we're forced into it late and on the back foot, with a consumer who has no idea why any of it costs what it costs. We'll have wasted the whole journey we had to bring them with us.
ECGT isn't a reason to go quiet on your green progress. It's a reason to get the groundwork right, so you can talk about it with confidence, and claim the credit you've earned for doing it properly.
That's what the Music Climate Pact is for. Thirteen Signatory labels, from the three majors to smaller, independent labels with a handful of staff, and with industry Supporters to back them including AIM, IMPALA, BPI and the IFPI, doing the unglamorous groundwork collaboratively, because getting this right efficiently is best done together.
Our recorded music community is already doing a lot of important work and achieving progress through the Music Climate Pact – much of which is set out on our website and its Stories of Action. Of course, there is so much more to do, but the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition) directive represents a further opportunity for our industry to embrace positive change and to lead and hopefully inspire other sectors with the example we set.
Climate training will be an important part of what we do going forward, and this afternoon (4pm, September 9) the Music Climate Pact in association in with Seismic is hosting a free webinar ahead of the ECGT with the goal of educating and encouraging our sector to align on how it can lead in communicating its environmental initiatives with knowledge and confidence. The session will focus on how to best leverage your impact and deliver authentic communication.
Navigating Sustainability & Green Claims in the Music Industry – register here to attend.
