Guster’s Gardner looks to green the music industry, one tour at a time

If there’s any industry as environmentally conflicted as the Colorado ski business, it’s the music industry. The carbon-spewing luxury hotels and sidewalk snowmelt systems that characterize the ski business here depend entirely on Colorado continuing to be cold and snowy place. And enormously wasteful plastic-cup concert venues and gas-guzzling tour buses mock the politics of green-minded musicians.

Adam Gardner of Guster is out to impact the carbon footprint of both industries this weekend when he brings his Reverb music-industry-greening organization to Vail for the annual Snow Daze music festival, which officially kicks off the new ski season.