By Tim Saunders
www.looktothestars.org

The country star wants you to take a photo of yourself using an alternative form of transport – one that has less of an effect on the environment. Simply by sending your photo to the Green Music Group, you can win $500 to spend at the Hard Rock Cafe. Every two weeks a GMG artist will make a challenge, and at the end of the competition – in August – one lucky entry will win a Honda Hybrid LX.

Willie is one of the founding members of the Green Music Group, along with Sheryl Crow, the Dave Matthews Band, The Roots, Linkin Park, Bonnie Raitt, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies and Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records. GMG is a large-scale, high-profile environmental coalition of musicians, industry leaders and music fans using their collective power to bring about widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe.

To find out about the Green Music Group, check out their website. Click here to watch Willie Nelson talk about the competition.

www.looktothestars.org

Willie Nelson is a Founding Member of the Green Music Group, which is affiliated with Reverb, the non-profit organization founded in 2004 by Guster’s Adam Gardner and his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan.

This summer the Green Music Group is initiating a number of challenges and anyone who participates is entered into a drawing to win a Honda Insight Hybrid. The current challenge (which concludes on Friday June 4 at noon ET) is “to find a more earth-friendly way to travel to work, school, his show.”

The details are available at the Green Music Group site and the grand prize for this weekly challenge is a $500 Gift certificate from Hard Rock.

As a legendary activist and one of the most vocal pioneers for alternative fuels, Willie Nelson has lead the way in using biodiesel not only for concert touring, but in everyday life. His “BioWillie” branded biodiesel put the stuff on the map, and today fueling with biodiesel is standard practice for any tour wanting to travel green.

Willie is also an honorary board member of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance (co-founded by his wife, Annie), which addresses issues concerning the sustainability of the U.S. biodiesel industry through certification, education, and by providing biodiesel consumers and suppliers with valuable online membership tools.

Among many other causes, Willie is also an avid supporter of family farmers, and in the mid-eighty’s organized the massively successful benefit concert series Farm Aid. To date, over $30 million has been raised to promote organic and humanely-raised local food and to help keep family farmers on their land.

http://challenge.greenmusicgroup.org/

www.treehugger.com

What? Willie Nelson is going hard rock? Well, he sure as heck isn’t slowing down; he is still on tour at age 77.  He is sticking to country, despite that one reggae album, and is giving away $500 to someone with a good eye and a great way to travel.

That’s where the Hard Rock comes in. Didn’t mean to fool you there. I also didn’t mean to refer to anything but up and coming when I referred to budding fans 

in a Willie Nelson post on Planet Green Instrumental. Really.

The challenge, until noon June 4, is to find an alternative way of travel, like biodiesel, or walking, riding a bike, or taking the train or the reins.

Take a picture of you and/or your friends taking the initiative, upload it to the GMG site and you could win $500 in bucks redeemable through Hard Rock, for concerts, hotels meals and merchandise. Everyone needs a Hard Rock T-shirt, for starters.

Every person who enters a challenge will have their name put into a really big jar, out of which a grand prize winner will be chosen later this year. That lucky person will drive off in a Honda Insight Hybrid.

http://challenge.greenmusicgroup.org/

http://challenge.greenmusicgroup.org/

Willie Nelson is one of the founding members of the Green Music Group,  a coalition of musicians, industry leaders, and music fans using our collective power to bring about widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe.  

Every two weeks, a GMG Artist will challenge YOU to make an eco-friendly change in your life. We’ll be taking these challenges along with you, and we’ll all be learning as we go. There are lots of cool prizes in the mix, so join us!

Much of the impact from festivals and concerts come from fans traveling to see their favorite musicians. That doesn’t mean you can’t indulge in your live music habits, but you CAN look for a lighter way to travel, both in your musical expeditions and in your everyday life!

Travel light! Whether it’s in your commute to work or your trip to the grocery store, find a way to travel that has less of an impact on the environment.

Take a picture of yourself using an alternative form of transportation. Don’t forget to be creative and have fun! For example, see how many people you can (safely) fit on a bicycle, or take all of your friends on the bus with you.

For more information on the challenge, and how to enter the contest:
http://challenge.greenmusicgroup.org/

TODAY, the 24 October, people in 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis.

To see all the amazing pictures, from all over the world, top of mountains, cities, the pyramids, underwater visit www.350.org.

 

Contributors: Lyric Wallwork Winik and Stephen Dignan
www.parade.com

NEWSMAKERS

A Green Way To Go
Country music icon Willie Nelson and his wife Annie run the nonprofit Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance as well as a business that distributes biodiesel for trucks. They spoke with PARADE about driving green.

How did you get so interested in biodiesel? 

Willie: I’ve worked with farmers for a long time, and I’m always trying to help them survive. Biodiesel—fuel made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled cooking grease—is something they can grow and sell. Annie asked me five years ago about running our brand-new Volkswagen with vegetable oil. I didn’t know if it was a good idea, but it ran great.

Your tour bus uses biodiesel. Where do you fill up?

Willie: When we first started, it was hard to find. But now our drivers know that if they’re going, say, from New York to L.A., they can call biodiesel trucks to come to our venues and fill our bus up. It can be biodiesel from soybeans or other vegetables or blended with regular diesel—whatever we can find.

How else do you lead a green lifestyle? 

Annie: We use solar and wind energy at home, and we don’t use plastic bags ever. Willie’s part Native American, and for us this is all about leaving as light a footprint on the Earth as possible.

http://www.willienelsonswaterfromair.com/index.php

Musician Willie Nelson has a new business venture: He is a partner in Willie Nelson’s Water From Air, the distributor of Wataire International atmospheric water generator units.

Nelson (shown here with one of the units), who cancelled his bottled spring water line because “he can’t stand the plastic bottles,” joined the distributorship after owning a Wataire unit and finding the technology “environmentally sound,” Ed Russell, Nelson’s business partner and friend, who founded the Gulf Coast distributorhship about six months ago told WaterTech Online. “Willie’s just waiting to get all of our machines in place, and then he’s going to go full-blown with it.  

According to Russell, Nelson plans to partner with musician Merle Haggard to open a California-based Wataire distributorship. Russell then will be Wataire’s sole Gulf Coast distributor. Russell said his brother Frank Russell, an environmental engineer based in Rochester will head up the Northeast region distributorship. According to Russell, Nelson’s interest in the Wataire units is because “he’s totally green,” Russell said, “He just feels that the world needs a renewable source of drinking water, seeing how all of it’s disappearing or being contaminated.”Nelson, who has made $5 million in improvements to a Carl’s Corner, TX-based truck stop  is installing a commercial-sized atmospheric water generator unit and other cooler-sized units throughout the building. The units will be featured during a grand opening celebration in July at the truck stop, Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner.The units generate water from the atmosphere, pulling moist air through a HEPA filter, and working much the same way a typical dehumidifying unit does, except that the newly generated water is pushed through a sediment filter, pre- and post-carbon filters, an ultrafine filter, and finally ultraviolet (UV) light before it is stored.

Stored water is recirculated in the UV chamber to retain its potability, Russell said, noting the cooler-sized units retail for $1,499. According to Russell, Nelson cancelled his bottled spring water line out of Arkansas because he can’t stand the plastic bottles. Russell said the bottler “won’t change the bottle and they’re overpriced.”

Wataire International has offices in Delta, British Columbia and Woodland Hills, CA.

http://www.watertechonline.com