Shawn Mendes Announces Wonder Tour Sustainability Initiatives: Exclusive
At a statement, the pop artist adds, "We are in a vital time for climate, and it's essential to me that this tour be a step in the right way."
Shawn Mendes' next Wonder global tour will include a number of environmental activities in addition to promoting his 2020 album Wonder, Billboard can exclusively disclose. As the music business strives towards greener and more climate-positive tours, Mendes is following in the footsteps of musicians like Coldplay and Billie Eilish.
The Wonder tour, which begins on June 27 in Portland, will minimise its per-show carbon impact by introducing simple but effective methods that both fans and tour personnel can participate in.
The tour will include goods made from sustainable textiles with fewer dyes, as well as energy-efficient lighting and electricity for the event itself, in order to meet its lowered emissions objective. When travelling from event to performance, the crew will utilise sustainable fuel sources, and food will be purchased from local farms, with any leftovers composted or given to relevant charities. To make the tour carbon neutral, fans are invited to carpool or use other modes of transportation to events.
"No strategy is flawless," Mendes said in a statement, "but we regard this as a beginning point." "We are at a critical juncture in terms of climate change, and I believe it is critical that this trip be a step in the right way."
Andrew Gertler, Mendes' manager and the founder of AG Artists, feels that now is the moment for major talents like Mendes to embrace sustainability in the business so that it may become the norm when more acts resume touring after the epidemic.
"We have the ability to lead by example, not just for our fans and industry, but also for others," Gertler tells Billboard. "Our objective is for true green travelling to become the standard sooner rather than later, and that as technology and our methods advance, it will become more and more cost-effective, allowing it to be applied across all tours, large and small."
"We set a goal to reduce our per-show footprint 50 percent per show from the last world tour," says AG Artists general manager Jordan Wolosky. "From how our merch was designed and created, to how the tour and our production travels and the fuel we use, to equipping our tour team and our fans with actions and information to make their tour experience more sustainable, we set a goal to reduce our per-show footprint 50 percent per show from the last world tour." "We were able to calculate our remaining CO2e footprint from there, and we're aiming to offset above and beyond what we're releasing to guarantee the trip is not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative."
Mendes collaborated with Reverb on sustainable initiatives including water refill stations for his 2019 global tour, which helped to remove over 1 million single-use plastic water bottles that would have otherwise ended up in landfills. As he embarks on the 80+ show tour across the globe, Mendes will team up with Reverb to create a "Impact Village" at each North American tour stop, with booths from The Shawn Mendes Foundation, Reverb's Music Climate Revolution, and local activists and organisations encouraging fans to pledge to take action against climate change. Mendes and his team will also invest in and give to organisations such as Gold Standard, Cool Effect, ACES, and Pachama, all of which work to reduce emissions.
Lauren Sullivan, Reverb's founder and co-executive director, notes, "Shawn has proven a profound dedication to safeguarding the world and taking meaningful climate action." "At performances, we can't wait to engage with Shawn's fans from all around the world in the Reverb Eco-Village." We're excited to see what we can achieve together since they've showed an incredible excitement and determination to taking real environmental action."
"Youth leaders and my classmates have inspired me, and I hope that our combined decisions push companies and people to value our world," Mendes says. "Let's keep growing together."
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