Why the Junos are having their most sustainable year yet

When Kim Fry lists off all the ways a music lover can mitigate their climate footprint at this year's Juno Awards, she's nearly out of breath. Shuttles, extended transportation hours, bike stands, repurposed merch, a carbon-neutral and all-ages festival stage — it's not everything on the wish list, but it's great progress.

"We're doing more than has ever been done [at the Junos]," explained Fry, who is the co-founder of the Canadian chapter of Music Declares Emergency, an organization that supports musicians and the music industry in reducing their climate impact. Through Music Declares, Fry has been working with the Junos and the City of Halifax to expand the awards' climate action plan, hopefully creating a template for years to come.

Since 2008, the Juno Awards' main focus has been on renewable energy and carbon offsets, in partnership with Bullfrog Power, but this year there's a big focus on alternative transportation, due to the fact that "85 per cent of the emissions connected to live music are related to audience travel and transportation," as Fry pointed out. 

It's a joint project she's been hoping to tackle for years, but COVID-19, as with everything else, delayed the best laid plans. When Fry learned the 2024 Junos were coming to Halifax, her now hometown, she seized her moment. Through Music Declares, she pitched the first ever sustainability subcommittee as part of the Junos' annual local host committee, which changes each year due its ever-changing annual location. 

The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), the non-profit organization behind the Junos, agreed, and the subcommittee was launched. Among the committee members were Fry, local musician Braden Lam, and folks from Halifax's Energy and Environment Department, which is responsible for HaliFACT, the city's climate action plan and movement.

"It's a good opportunity to really bring the climate and sustainability conversation into the most prominent night in Canadian music," says Fry.

By bus, car, foot or bike

Some of Music Declares Emergency's main work with CARAS and the City of Halifax had a straightforward goal: get people to where they need to go while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With that in mind, there is now a robust list of options (with full details here):

• Free transportation from the airport to downtown Halifax on Friday, March 22, with shuttles leaving 15 minutes before the hour, every hour, between 9:45 a.m. and 6:45 p.m. A DJ will also be set up at the airport, alongside Music Declares Emergency, to "talk to people about how audience travel is the big thing," said Fry.
   
• Free transportation on Halifax Transit buses for all volunteers for the weekend.
   
• There will be a free Juno shuttle on Friday, March 22, from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, then again on Saturday, March 23, and Sunday, March 24, from noon to midnight, to get people between Junofest venues. Find the map here.
   
• Shuttles from Lower Sackville and Dartmouth (Portland Hills) will run on Saturday, March 23, and Sunday, March 24, at both locations from 3 p.m. to midnight (with midnight being the last trip leaving downtown).
   
• Halifax Transit ferry service will be extended an hour in the evenings from Friday through Sunday.
   
• Five electric vehicles will be the music industry shuttles and red carpet drop-off vehicles from March 21 to 24. 
   
• Nine new and permanent bike racks have been installed around Juno venues around the city, including: Scotiabank Centre, the Light House Arts Centre, the Marquee, the Halifax Central Library, the Carleton, St. Andrew's Church, Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, Sanctuary Arts Centre and New Scotland Brewing. Use the City of Halifax's venues map to plan a route that makes the most sense for you, no matter how you're travelling.

Hosting an awards show that moves across the country also comes with its fair share of cross-Canada travel. Since 2008, CARAS has worked with Bullfrog Power, and over the last decade they have avoided 6,489 total tonnes of CO2e, which stands for "carbon dioxide equivalent," which is a term for describing different greenhouse gases in a common unit. That number from CARAS, as they've described on their website, is similar to taking nearly 1,500 cars off the road for a year.

This year, CARAS will offset 100 per cent of its travel — which includes that of its employees, delegates and employees of Insight (the production company that puts on the Junos) — to the awards, and between venues. Currently that offset is estimated to be 426.3 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

The only free, all-ages, outdoor stage

Another focus for the sustainability committee was for Music Declares and the City of Halifax to program the HaliFACT Climate Stage: a free, all-ages outdoor stage set up outside the Halifax Central Library. Powered by solar panels and bike pedalling, it will be a carbon neutral stage for its four days of programming. (If you bring your bike down, you can also get a free bike tune-up from the Ecology Action Centre.)

"I pitched it to the artists that we were asking to be on a stage as a platform for all forms of activism and voices," said Halifax-based singer-songwriter Lam, who organized the Climate Stage. "I think there is a way that any voice and any activism can intersect with the climate crisis. And for us, just the fact that it's there, being called the climate stage, it's really good presence."

One of the questions he asked in putting together the climate stage was: How does the general community member participate in climate action?

"Maybe right now, this stage — and just going to listen to this music and hearing these artists' voices — is one of the only ways that a community member can participate in the HaliFACT vision, and the vision that the city has for a greener future," he said. 

The Climate Stage lineup will include half-hour sets from: 

• Thursday, March 21, 5-7 p.m.: Tragedy Ann, Moonfruits, Freya Milliken.
   
• Friday, March 22, 5-7 p.m.: BASYL, Aleksi Campagne, Donna Grantis.
   
• Saturday, March 23, 2-5:30 p.m.: Apryll Aileen, Electro Jacques Therapy, Housewife, Kristen Martell, DeeDee Austin.
   
• Sunday, March 24, 2-5:30 p.m.: Avery Dakin, Ballsy, Braden Lam, Laura Rae, Moira & Claire. 

Grantis, a Toronto-based guitarist who used to play and record with Prince, also performed at the March 17 Music Declares Emergency climate concert, where the first Canadian Environmental Music Awards were launched. The intersection of music and climate is the artist's sole creative focus right now. 

"I'm here because I really believe in the power of music to inspire new ideas, new feelings and new connections — both with each other, and with the Earth," she said at the concert, after performing work from a project where she's pairing climate activist voices with her own compositions. Her 2023 song, "A Drop in the Bucket," was the first release from that collection, and it features the voice of Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

Grantis released "A Drop in the Bucket" for Earth Day last year as part of EarthPercent, Brian Eno's environmental charity through which artists can sign over one per cent or more of their songwriting credits to Earth — and the money made will be donated to organizations dealing with climate change.   

Grantis will additionally be performing at Music Declares Emergency's March 20 event, along with Housewife, and the evening will include a discussion of Andrea Warner's book Rise Up And Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music. Music Declares will also be hosting a mini climate summit on March 22 at the Halifax Central Library, which is free to attend. Sustainable merch boxes will be set up at these events, as well as Juno events all weekend, where you can donate old band T-shirts and other clothing — plus blank hoodies and T-shirts — to be recycled into other products. 

In addition to supporting the carbon neutral climate stage, CARAS will work to minimize its carbon footprint for the venues it runs all weekend: Bullfrog Power will match 100 per cent of the energy used at the CARAS office, Juno events and accommodations by putting an equivalent amount of renewable, pollution-free electricity back into the grid. CARAS includes a breakdown of that process on its website.

Environmental legacy

While CARAS has been investing in offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions for more than 15 years, the organization is still working toward a plan that will more fully look at how to address its carbon footprint. This year, for example, the Awards have gone fully digital with ticketing, and have dropped their printed programs in an effort to use less paper. (You can read the full list of efforts on the CARAS Sustainability page.)

"For us it's more of a values position right now," said Andres Mendoza, vice president at CARAS and the Juno Awards. "We don't know what our long-term goals are, except that we should minimize our impact, in terms of environmental impact of the Junos themselves…. We do travel every year, so that's a massive consideration."

Mendoza is hopeful that next year's Juno Awards, which are returning to Vancouver, will build on this year's offering. "We'll work very closely with our host committee, with the City of Vancouver, the province to take some learnings from this year," he said. "What were the impacts from a positive standpoint? What are areas that we can learn from? And then apply that to sort of a framework."

Fry points to the Brit Awards, which this year teamed up with the U.K. chapter of Music Declares Emergency to support the organization's No Music on a Dead Planet campaign. It's a call to action to get bands and the audience involved in the campaign, with incentives given away through the Brit Awards — free tickets to the awards, for example. 

"We would really like to replicate that for next year and have the climate messaging be a little bit more centred, because we're doing this stuff locally, but we're like, how do we bring it in to have it be a more central part of CARAS?" said Fry.