Hello friends! This is Erin Gorski writing in for my first on the road contribution to the Warped Eco Initiative blog. I began working for WEI in 2005 which makes this my fourth summer working to create a more sustainable Warped Tour. Every summer I have seen the program grow and even more importantly, I have seen a shift in the mentality that leans more towards environmental concern rather than convenience.

Prime example: Denver, CO Warped show at Invesco Field at Mile High. The venue never had a recycling program in place until this year! Therefore, the WEI volunteers and venue employees were able to collaborate to create an even stronger recycling effort. With a full crew of 20 volunteers we were able to fill about 100 bags of recyclables which equates to 1,300 lbs of bottles and cans. The amount of cardboard we diverted from the landfill was pretty much impossible to estimate. Along with our normal set of volunteers, we were joined by the members of the band The Color Fred along with Matt from Angels and Airwaves who all took time out of their busy schedules so throw on a green WEI shirt and walk around the venue collecting recyclables.

Denver was a day of firsts as we held THREE acoustic performances in the WEI solar powered booth. Between the Trees, Panima, and Midwell all hooked up their PA’s and mics to our solar panels and performed completely off of solar energy. We also hosted a signing with the band Alesana who worked out a special deal with their eco-minded fans: collect 5 bottles or cans and purchase their CD for only $5…quite the deal.

Closing out the day, Tara and I stopped by the kitchen of the fine folks over at TaDa catering to pickup the veggie oil that they no longer needed. We then hauled the container to Andy at Top Shelf Records/rentgreenvans.com. He reuses the oil in his van which he converted to run on discarded vegetable oil.

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