Environmental activist and Help+Feed founder Maggie Baird has been working towards a extra sustainable future at each stage of her life. At no level in her journey did it develop into extra evident that work wanted to be performed than when her kids — Grammy winners Billie Eilish and Finneas — entered the music trade.
“On the time it appeared like nobody was speaking about it,” Baird tells The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom, recalling when Eilish first broke by as a touring celebrity within the late 2010s. “Oh, the waste, the plastic water bottles, the reward packing containers, the packaging, the merch, simply all the things was overwhelming. On the highway it’s exhausting, and so comfort turns into the secret. It was like, ‘Wait, we’ve created a world.’ We’re vegan, we live very sustainably with all our selections, and now we’ve stepped right into a world.”
It’s a very delicate matter for Baird, 66, a lifetime environmentalist and local weather change activist who has spent a lot of her life seeking to protect nature. It began in childhood, as Baird recollects avoiding consuming something her father would catch if he went searching or fishing, and carried nicely into maturity, as she and her household put in solar energy and eliminated grass at dwelling and wrapped Christmas items in luggage she sewed.
Recalling Eilish’s early touring days, Baird encountered apathy as she was instructed the wasteful nature of the trade was “simply the best way it’s.” Not accepting the established order, she discovered assist in such organizations as Reverb, a nonprofit devoted to making a extra sustainable music trade, launched to her by Coldplay’s Chris Martin. By 2020, she based her personal nonprofit, Help+Feed, which seeks to handle the local weather disaster by championing plant-based meals and tackling meals insecurity.
“I began to attach and would ask questions,” she explains, encouraging different touring musicians to do the identical. “Be interested by what you’re doing, and ask if it may be performed higher. For artists particularly, you shouldn’t must do all of it your self. In case you have any sort of a crew, your job is to empower them to say to everyone you’re employed with, ‘That is essential to me.’ If we’re going to have a lunch assembly, let’s have a plant-based meal. If we’re going to make merch, let’s make it as sustainable as doable. Come to me with the choices.”
With Help+Feed, Baird is taking intention at one of the direct causes of the local weather disaster with meals, hoping that her and Eilish’s attain within the music enterprise will solid a a lot wider internet.
“Getting folks to grasp that what we eat issues, and each time you can also make a extra sustainable selection, make extra plant-based meals, that makes a significant impression,” Baird says. “The music trade has a lot energy to do this. Each area, each stadium, each venue is serving so many individuals that in the event you make your menu 80 % plant-based, you’re going to make such a huge impact.”
Baird had the concept for the group throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with the shutdown displaying how a lot folks have been going to wish meals. Specializing in extra sustainable plant-based choices was a transparent conclusion.
“After we stepped into the world of meals insecurity and meals fairness — to which I’ll say I used to be woefully unaware — my eyes have been actually opened by the extent of the inequitable meals techniques,” Baird says. “We simply discovered that there weren’t any organizations of measurement and making a connection between what we eat and the local weather disaster and well being and neighborhood assist.”
Baird says her nonprofit was meant to bridge the hole, explaining that the hyperlink between local weather change and meals insecurity are linked in a number of methods. “Not solely in the reason for how we acquired right here, however the place we’re going, to finish up with meals shortage and meals shortages, so we now have to mix our efforts,” she says.
Baird emphasizes that Help+Feed works to feed folks scrumptious in addition to nourishing meals, an essential resolution provided that plant-based meals aren’t all the time an thrilling prospect for non-vegetarians. Help+Feed’s offered meal may be the primary time an individual is knowingly consuming one thing plant-based. The group additionally hopes to extend entry and consciousness of plant-based meals.
“We now have to supply entry to people who find themselves disadvantaged of that by native or monetary means. On the earth of meals insecurity and meals inequity, L.A. is a main instance,” she explains. “Within the first 12 months, I’d be touring to areas of town, delivering meals [to people] that had no grocery shops, no produce and [living in a place that was] two levels hotter than the place I used to be coming from due to the dearth of bushes and inexperienced areas.”
With Baird, Eilish has made vital efforts in bettering her excursions’ sustainability efforts, from serving plant-based meals choices for the crew backstage to bringing an “eco-action village” to her tour stops the place followers can be taught extra about easy methods to decrease their carbon footprint. Help+Feed additionally supplied show-goers at some stops an opportunity to take part in meals drives. These efforts have given Eilish’s excursions an industrywide status, because the commerce publication Pollstar introduced a brand new sustainability award for its annual awards present, with Eilish because the namesake.
“Within the 2022 tour for Billie, we took the ferry thrice in the midst of the evening,” Baird says. “That’s as a substitute of [flying], as a result of making these selections and making [sure] everyone is aware of these are the alternatives we’re going to make [is important.]”
There are lots of challenges the enterprise faces in turning into greener — Baird reiterates industrywide coverage change will play an enormous half in real change — however Baird factors to the style trade for artist merchandise as a significant problem. (On the Hit Me Onerous and Mushy Tour, Eilish’s shirts are product of recycled cotton and polyester, her tour posters from recycled paper.)
“Individuals treasure their band merch in all probability greater than they do different merch, so one might make a case [that] there’s a sustainability think about the truth that you’re not going to throw that away, however it must be top quality so that it’ll final ethically and soundly made,” Baird says.
Baird and her kids proceed to push for a extra sustainable future. Eilish and Help+Feed are bringing their Overheated occasion to 2 of the singer’s European tour dates.
Overheated — happening Could 9 in Berlin and July 14 in London — goals to carry collectively local weather activists, music followers and specialists for discussions and community-building. The daylong occasions, which Eilish has performed for earlier stops on her Hit Me Onerous and Mushy Tour, options applications that may assist visitors be taught small actions to fight local weather change. Info and ticketing data for Overheated could be discovered on Eilish’s web site.
Baird says she doesn’t consider the music trade is any extra accountable than different industries within the local weather struggle however says it’s uniquely positioned to make change. And the trade ought to deal with these efforts for its personal self-interest, as excessive climate circumstances from local weather change have already begun to impression the enterprise now, and people results will solely develop additional pronounced.
“The touring trade is in jeopardy from the local weather disaster. I don’t assume individuals are feeling it sufficient but,” she provides. “That may change as insurance coverage insurance policies change. When you’ll be able to’t get insured for climate, immediately you’re going to grasp.”
This story seems within the April 2025 Sustainability digital situation of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to see the remainder of the problem.
