cold play
Greenwashing allegations against tour partners
Coldplay try to make their tour as environmentally friendly as possible.
© yakub88/Shutterstock
Coldplay want to make their tour more environmentally friendly with an oil supplier – but the company should only want to do greenwashing.
In order to halve the emissions from their “Music of the Spheres” tour, Coldplay have teamed up with the Finnish oil company Neste – for which they are now being criticized.
Neste claims to be the world’s largest producer of sustainable biofuels. However, a study by Friends of the Earth reports that the company’s palm oil suppliers cleared at least 10,000 hectares of forest in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia between 2019 and 2020.
“Helpful Idiots”
Carlos Calvo Ambel, Senior Director of Europe’s largest environmental umbrella organization T&E, said according to the Guardianthat this is exactly the kind of deforestation that would “horrify” the band and their fans. It continues: “Working with a company that is connected to deforestation makes them [Coldplay] to helpful idiots for greenwashing.” Greenwashing refers to PR methods with which companies outwardly present themselves as environmentally friendly, but are not.
In a statement, the band also commented on the subject: “We don’t claim that we’re doing everything right,” says Coldplay. But they received the supplier’s guarantee that only renewable waste products would be used in the production of the biofuels – and especially no palm oil. We still assume that. A Neste spokeswoman also assured that no “conventional palm oil would be used as a raw material” for the cooperation with Coldplay.
A tree for each card
Coldplay have come up with a few things for their new tour to make them as climate neutral as possible. A tree would be planted for every ticket sold on the Music of the Spheres tour. There should also be a dance floor that generates electricity through the movement of the audience. In addition, there would be no plastic bottles in the locations – but free drinking water. The tour also takes the band to Germany for six concerts in July.