Let's Imitate The Three Principles Of Coldplay To Protect The Environment Through Their Concert

JAKARTA When the world returns to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, which forces almost everyone to stop activities for approximately two years, concert events include one of the things music lovers miss.

So it is not surprising that later music concerts will be held in Indonesia. Starting from small scale, to large scale. Starting from Indonesian artists, to foreign countries.

One of the world's bands that is again on tour is Coldplay. The band, which is fronted by Chris Martin, Guy Berryman, Will Champion, and Jonny Buckland, has been on a tour titledMusic of the Spheres World Tour since March 18, 2022, with Costa Rica being the first country to visit.

Indonesia is among the countries Coldplay visited on its world tour this time. Coldplay sang 22 of its flagship songs in front of 80 thousand fans at the Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium, Jakarta, Wednesday (15/11/2023).

However, as we all know, music concerts often cause problems with the environment, especially for large-scale concerts like Coldplay does. Starting from pollution to plastic waste, it is often a problem that lags behind after the concert. Not yet a stage-making match that requires a lot of power.

Coldplay, as one of the bands that cares about environmental issues, has a unique way to solve the pollution and pollution problems resulting from its concerts.

The band from England had not held a world tour for their eighth album, Everyday Life, which was released in 2019 until it found a way to minimize the environmental impact brought from their concerts.

For a band as big as Coldplay, it must be difficult to create a concert that is fully environmentally friendly. However, as a band that has a broad impact globally, they adopt a number of unique ways to tackle the pollution and pollution problems resulting from concerts.

Especially for the Music of the Spheres World Tourini concert, Coldplay applies three main principles, namely reducing, reinventing, and restoring. These three principles are applied both in front and behind the scenes.

Reduce, in its concert, Coldplay seeks to reduce carbon emissions during the world tour. Launching pagecoldplay.com, the band, which was formed in 1997, targets to reduce carbon emissions during the world tour by up to 50 percent.

And, after the first 12 months of Music of the Spheres World Tour, Coldplay released data independently created by Prof. John E.Fernandez from the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative.

"So far the Music of the Spheres tour has reduced 47 percent of carbon emissions compared to previous stadium tours during 2016-2017," Coldplay said in a statement on their official website.

Despite being proud of this achievement, Coldplay insists there is still a'space for improvement' to continue to reduce the environmental impacts resulting from their tours.

As a form of Coldplay's commitment to holding an environmentally friendly concert, Guy Berryman and colleagues replaced the use of fossil-based energy with renewable energy sources. The band also reduced the use of aircraft as a means of transportation, as long as possible, and switched to electric cars for driving.

Even Coldplay invites its fans to use public transportation to reach the concert location. During a concert in Jakarta, 163,162 passengers took advantage of the Integrated Moda Raya (MRT) public transportation service. This is the record for the highest number of passengers during the MRT operating.

"This figure is the highest number of passengers during MRT Jakarta operations since 2019," said Head of the Corporate Secretary Division of PT MRT Jakarta, Ahmad Pratomo.

Of this figure, Ahmad explained that more than 13 thousand of them were MRT service users from 00.00 to 01.30, which was a special operational schedule during the Coldplay concert.

As a second-principles commitment, Coldplay created new things to minimize damage from concerts. Coldplay involves fans watching concerts to reduce the footprint of carbon emissions.

Coldplay builds kinetic dance floors and bicycle stations that can re-charge batteries that are directly used in concerts.

Each kinetic dance floor can accommodate dozens of people, and generate electricity when there is movement on it. And each bike can generate an average energy of 200 watts stored in the battery to run their visit. At each concert, Coldplay provides at least 15 bicycles, but it can increase according to venue size.

Plus the installation of solar power at the concert site, the energy produced by the kinetic dance floor and bicycle station is enough to carry out the band action on stage C.

The last principle is restoring, which means returning. As a form of repay services' to the earth, Coldplay donated part of the proceeds from ticket sales in the form of planting trees for each ticket sold. They also contributed to planting 100 thousand trees in Kalimantan through theWater Catchment Restoration.

Coldplay's commitment to environmental issues is also proven by contributing a river cleaning boat, Interceptor, to Indonesia. The ship is the result of collaboration with the non-profit organization The Ocean Cleanup which is used to clean the Cisadane River from scattered garbage.

Previously, Coldplay also donated Interceptor 005 aka Neon Moon I to Malaysia in 2021.

"Now, we are reuniting our strengths again to support Interceptor 020 aka Neon Moon II which will soon be launched on the Cisadane River, Indonesia. Thank you Coldplay for the continuous support," said the video narration uploaded by The Ocean Cleanup on their YouTube channel on Thursday (16/11).

Coldplay is not the only artist in the world to campaign to care about the environment in every concert they have. Several other artists such as Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, and Billie Eilish are committed to environmental issues.