ROTHBURY’S 2009 SUSTAINABLE SCHOOLS PROGRAM WITH EARTHTRONICS: THE ANSWER IS BLOWING IN THE WIND

ROTHBURY’s 2009 Sustainable Schools Program and EarthTronics, a local Muskegon-based company, joined together to help outfit two local Michigan Schools with wind turbines for energy saving and educational purposes. In Fall 2009, thanks to the generosity of EarthTronics and of ROTHBURY Green Ticket purchasers, ROTHBURY will install two Honeywell Wind Turbines at two local schools, to be used to both generate energy, and as an educational tool to teach students how the wind turbine works and the importance conserving energy.

To read about last year’s Program click the 2008 tab above.

ROTHBURY Music In Schools Program

The power of music is the core of ROTHBURY.  ROTHBURY's Music in Schools Program works to help keep music a part of the curriculum in local Michigan schools by donating money and instruments and offering hands-on experiences to music students, such as performance opportunities at the festival.
 
This year’s Music in Schools will donate musical instruments to Shelby High School and Montague High School.

To read about the 2008 Music In Schools Program click the 2008 tab above.

ROTHBURY’s Food Drive in partnership with Conscious Alliance

ROTHBURY and Conscious Alliance teamed up again in 2009 to host a FOOD DRIVE at the festival. ROTHBURY attendees donated more than 17,100 lbs of non-perishable and canned food items, breaking last year’s record! All donations were distributed to local Michigan food pantries including Teen Challenges, Lebanon Lutheran, Trinity Lutheran, Rothbury Catholic Church, Word of Life, and Shiloh Food Pantry.

To read more about last years Food Drive click the 2008 Tab above.

Visit www.consciousalliance.org for more information on the important work of Conscious Alliance.

OFFSETTING

ROTHBURY offset our own energy use (staff and band travel, stage generators, etc) on our own dime. In 2008 and 2009 fans had the option to offeset their travel carbon through ROTHBURY's Ticket for Good Program.

How offsetting works: 
We are all directly and indirectly responsible for pollution. We live in our homes, drive our cars…and these activities put carbon into the atmosphere. In a nutshell, whatever pollution you add to the atmosphere, you can in-effect subtract by purchasing offsets. When you purchase these offsets, the money goes to programs that will reduce carbon in the future. You can choose to offset in a number of ways. ROTHBURY has chosen to reduce our carbon by donating to the development of a new wind farm in the Midwest called Tatanka. The best way to deal with carbon is to create less of it in the first place (carpool, ride a bike, use solar, biodiesel, etc). But for those items which you can not change, offsetting is, in effect, a way of balancing out that which you create.

ROTHBURY has estimated attendee travel as follows:
•    30% of attendees driving 200 RT miles / 2.5 attendees per car
•    50% of attendees driving 500 RT miles / 2.5 attendees per car
•    20% of attendees flying 2,500 RT miles / via commercial airline

Our collective carbon created will depend on how many attendees we have. However, based on this model above, our individual carbon output will remain the same regardless of how many people attend. Individually, we are estimating under .3 short tons of carbon per person, which $3 per person will safely cover through our offsetting partners BEF. If any funds remain from this estimate, they will go toward our Sustainable Schools Program. 

ROTHBURY offset our own energy use (staff and band travel, stage generators, etc) on our own dime. The calculation above is specific to fans offsetting their personal travel only.

ROTHBURY Mobile Phone Recycling Drive

DID YOU KNOW?

• Cell phones contain toxic substances such as lead, nickel and zinc that enter the     ecosystem when phones are taken to landfills or incinerated.

• There are over one billion out of use cell phones in the US alone. That’s more than 3 out of use phones for every person in the US!

• Less than 10% of cell phones are recycled properly. The rest enter landfills or incinerators, among other environmentally unsound destination.

• Average life span of mobile phone – 16 months!

In partnership with Musictoday, Gibson and Collective Good, Rock the Earth called upon all Rothbury attendees to bring their old, unwanted mobile phones to the Rock the Earth booth for redemption. Each person who brought a phone received 20% Off future Musictoday purchases, AND each phone was worth one entry into the on-site sweepstakes drawing for cool prizes like DVDs, CDs, t-shirts, signed memorabilia, a Gibson Guitar, and other great prizes.

If you did not attend the festival but still want to enjoy the discount and a chance at additional great prizes, you can submit via the following avenue: www.collectivegood.com/rothbury

About BEF

The Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit organization, was established in 1998 to further the development and use of new renewable energy resources and restore watershed ecosystems. Through revenues generated from the sale of green power products, BEF funds projects that support new renewable energy projects from solar, wind and biomass and restore damaged watersheds. Revenues generated from its sales of Green Tags directly support additional new watershed restoration and renewable energy projects. More information is available at www.greentagsusa.org or www.b-e-f.org.

About Tatanka

This significant renewable energy project is the largest wind farm in North and South Dakota and will generate enough clean energy to power more than 60,000 U.S. homes. The plant went online July 25, 2008.

The Tatanka Wind Farm is comprised of 120 wind turbines with 59 turbines located in South Dakota and 61 turbines in North Dakota. The electricity generated at the Tatanka Wind Farm is sold into the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO), which delivers electric power to a very large region of the upper mid-western United States and Canada.

The Tatanka facility is spread across 14,080 rural acres. With the exception of the small footprint made by the 120 turbines, at about 1 acre each, land use is dominated by cattle grazing and crop cultivation, which coexist with the wind energy production. Wind conditions in the Tatanka region are optimal for wind energy generation, however, the size of the Tatanka Wind Farm is limited by regional transmission capacity.

VIABILITY's Carbon Assessment

Viability, a provider of carbon assessments for businesses around the country, performed a carbon assessment on ROTHBURY Festival 2009. The carbon assessment accounts for greenhouse gases generated from a variety of sources, including on-site generators, propane used by vendors, and travel of the ROTHBURY performers. Results will be coming soon. Viability's services to business include carbon assessments, grant writing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, and carbon credit development. For more information on Viability's involvement and how you can participate, go to www.viabilityllc.com.

ROTHBURY's philanthropic programs, including ROTHBURY's Music in Schools Program, ROTHBURY's Solar Schools Program, and the ROTHBURY Food Drive, all support our commitment to give back to the local community. 2008's inaugural event proved incredibly successful in generating unique and much needed resources for the local community.  ROTHBURY looks forward to expanding these programs, and introducing new ones, in the years to come.

 

Major League Baseball also pitched in to host the ultimate Music in Schools fundraiser at ROTHBURY; their batting cages became a donation bowl, as volunteers from Gibson’s repertoire of musicians – including 311’s Nick Hexum, Chad Sexton and Aaron “P-Nut” Willis, Colbie Caillat, and David Murphy of STS9 – took their chance at the plate. With each hit, Major League Baseball donated to the Music in Schools Program, contributing a total of $5,000 to the schools.  Curt Isakson, Director of Bands for Shelby County Schools, said of ROTHBURY's Music in Schools Program, “The value of the instruments gifted to the Shelby Public Schools music program far exceeds the dollars, or even the number of hands I can put these instruments into.  The kids get a huge benefit when they realize people believe they are worth ‘investing’ in.”

In addition to the donations, Shelby High School Jazz Band and Montague High School Jazz Band both performed at ROTHBURY 2008.

 

Greening a large-scale event is no small task and many aspects require creativity and innovation.  A major element in green event planning is carbon offsetting.  To integrate ROTHBURY’s commitment to the local community and ROTHBURY’s energy independence theme, the 2008 festival partnered with RVL 7 by RE:VOLVE Apparel, Black Rock Solar and Grand Rapids’ own Bauer Power to create ROTHBURY’s Solar Schools Program, which donates solar panel programs to local area schools. “We were looking for creative ways to offset our carbon footprint,” explains Jeremy Stein, ROTHBURY’s Event Producer.  “Our Solar Schools Program is exciting to me because it provides tangible, lasting benefits for the school.”

This year’s Solar Schools Program recipient, Shelby High School, received a 6 kilowatt power system, expected to generate 10,800 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, resulting in savings of approximately $36,000 over the next 25 years. All of the money saved will stay in the school, to support the educational needs of the students. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for the school to teach the importance of renewable energy, like reducing greenhouse gasses.  We’re very grateful to the ROTHBURY community for helping make this possible,” said Dana McGrew, Superintendent of Shelby Public Schools.

 

ROTHBURY, together with not-for-profit organization Conscious Alliance, hosted a Food Drive at the inaugural event, which collected 16,344 lbs of food via festival attendee donations (Conscious Alliance’s highest single event collection in their six year history).

An additional 45,725 cans of food were donated by Whole Foods Market®.  The cans were used in a one-of-a-kind sculpture that was on display at the festival.  The sculpture – designed by Architect John Brittingham and students of his Graduate Architecture Program at Montana State University, in the form of a hand reaching out to receive a can of food – was set the Guinness World Record for “largest canned food sculpture.”

All of the food, a combined total of approximately 66,000 lbs., went to benefit local Michigan food pantries.

“The fans of ROTHBURY donated a huge amount of food.  Overall, ROTHBURY was one of the most successful events The Conscious Alliance has seen,” said Justin Baker Founder and President of The Conscious Alliance.