Singer and fiddler Laura Cortese tours year-round with her band, The Dance Cards. Since 2017, they have toured plastic-free. She sat down with STAC’s Laura Risk for an interview.
Laura Risk: Tell me how you started touring plastic-free.
Laura Cortese: In July 2017, a friend forwarded me an email from Green Music Australia asking, “What are you doing for Plastic-Free July?” They had launched a campaign for artists: they wanted you to take a photo of your band with your reusable water bottles and then commit to being plastic-free for the month of July.
LR: So you weren’t committing to never using single-use plastics. It was just for the month of July?
LC: The idea was to commit to it for July. But after doing it for a whole month — and July is a pretty heavy touring month — it just becomes part of what you do. You already have the reusable water bottle and you’ve already changed your rider.
We just kept doing it and every July we recommit. Inevitably, when you are further from that month-long commitment, you find yourself occasionally ordering a salad in an airport, say, and then realizing that it comes in a plastic container. When you recommit again to Plastic-Free July, you’re very focused on it. It helps you reorient your priorities. It’s like any kind of training commitment that you make in your life. When you really focus on it, you’re really good at it. As time drifts away from that period of intense focus, certain things remain in your daily practice and some things drift away.
For us, it was amazing how much less trash there was in the car. We’d had our own water bottles for a long time but for Plastic-Free July we also got our own reusable coffee cups. So then we weren’t using paper coffee cups either, or plastic cups for iced coffee.
LR: What is the hardest part of being plastic-free on the road?
LC: As a musician, you’re trying to find a balance between your personal health, your mental health, your budget, and the health of the planet. It can be hard to make all of those align if you don’t plan ahead. You need to think about what you’re going to eat or consume.
Some kinds of planning you can do further in advance. Tour routing, for instance. You can make sure that your drives are short enough that you can stop and eat a meal in a restaurant, or go to a grocery store that has compostables and a place to compost. But when you have a 5+ hour travel day, a lot of that goes out the window.
You can also think about your call time. Can you allow more time for your drive so you can make those stops in the middle of the day?
Plastic-Free July helps you change the decisions you make throughout the day. I might want an iced coffee, but if I walk into the café and realize that it’s going to be in a plastic cup, I could decide to have a cappuccino instead. That fits into my small reusable coffee mug.
LR: What do you bring with you when you’re flying or driving?
LC: A water bottle, a coffee cup, a collapsible bowl and utensils.
I have a Japanese utensil kit with a metal fork, spoon, and chopsticks. It fits in a small tube. Some of the other band members have kits with a bamboo fork, knife and spoon. You can usually get that type of kit at a sporting goods store. A utensil kit means that no matter what you order, you don’t have to accept plastic cutlery.
One of my bandmates has a bowl that collapses to almost flat. With a lid it’s about a centimeter high. Say you’re at a hotel that has a nice breakfast buffet and you want to take extra for lunch. Or you’re at a restaurant and you want to take leftovers. You take out your collapsible and use that instead of whatever single use take away container the hotel or restaurant has on hand.
I also bring beeswax wraps. They are easy to carry and if you have a leftover sandwich, you can wrap it up and take it with you.
Each person in my band has a different favorite drink. That led them to choose what kind of reusable coffee mug to buy, or what size of reusable water bottle. The first water bottle I had was very small, so I switched to a medium size. There is a large size but I found that my bag was too heavy if I had the large bottle and my computer. You find a balance. With the medium I have to refill more often.
One of our band members does overnight oats. You can make it in your coffee cup or your collapsible bowl. On your rider, you request oatmeal and milk (non-dairy or regular milk). You can carry other things you’d like to put in the oatmeal, like nuts, cinnamon or chia seeds, with you. Every evening, you set up your overnight oats before the show and put them in the fridge in the venue during the show. In the winter your vehicle is basically a refrigerator but even without refrigeration overnight, the overnight oats are good in the morning. It creates very little trash. On your rider, specify the size of the oats container or the milk container, so the venue doesn’t provide individual portion sizes. If there are leftovers, you can encourage someone at the venue to take them home.
What if you want to make your overnight oats but you already have leftovers in your bowl and coffee in your cup? You’re constantly planning ahead: I’ll eat leftovers for lunch today so I can use the container for my overnight oats… One band member decided to carry an extra collapsible bowl. The bowls take up very little space.
LR: What if you forget to plan, or just don’t want those leftovers when it comes time for a meal, how does that affect your choices during the day?
LC: Sometimes we make a to-go lunch stop at a grocery store on a long travel day and I try to figure out what I can buy that will have the least impact. I walk around the store, maybe they have a sandwich bar where they wrap them in paper (which is compostable) or a salad bar with compostable containers as opposed to a plastic container of salad greens, and a plastic container of hummus. I try to do my best.
Sometimes you end up in a situation where you use plastic, though. It’s important to not focus on the guilt but instead say to yourself: it’s OK, that’s what happened today. Tomorrow, how can I plan better so that that doesn’t happen? When I feel guilty, I accomplish less.
Maybe you have a small coffee mug but in summer you really want iced coffee, so you end up holding a plastic coffee cup. You can have two mugs, or try to think ahead. Is this a tour where I’m going to want iced coffee? I’ll bring my tall mug.
What is fun for me is talking to other people who are doing it, finding out where they ran into trouble and how they dealt with it.
LR: What about flying?
LC: One problem with flying -- other than the carbon emissions, of course! -- is that it can be hard to get the airline staff to refill my bottle. I’ve had situations where one flight attendant will fill it and another won’t. I have two reusable water bottles so sometimes for a long flight I’ll take both of them.
It depends how you feel about cans, but if you ask, they will usually give you an entire can of a drink. Instead of opening the can and pouring it into a plastic cup!
You’re making decisions that have to do with your own health and also the health of the planet. You have to stay hydrated.
I think it’s good to ask the flight attendant, “Can you fill my mug? I don’t want to use plastic.” It’s good to have that conversation, to say that out loud around the people around you. “Can you pour that into my cup? I don’t want to use single-use plastic.” If they say no, you say, “I don’t want to use single-use plastic. Could I have that can?” It doesn’t have to be a big deal but hopefully when you say that, it has a ripple effect. It makes the people around you think, “Oh, there is a lot of single-use plastic on a plane. What am I doing about that?”
But if it doesn’t work out in the moment, it’s OK. It’s one flight. You do what you can and try again the next time.
LR: What about food on a long flight? Airplane meals come with so much plastic packaging. Do you just say no and bring your own?
LC: I fly United and I’ve selected Asian vegetarian meals. Those have a little less plastic than the normal meal. They mostly come in tin foil and the morning meal comes in cardboard. But there is still a plastic water bottle on your tray, and a plastic fork. I don’t open the plastic fork, but I have no idea if they reuse it.
You can certainly bring your own food, but they’ve already brought those meals onto the plane. Unless there’s a way to say, “I don’t want a meal,” I don’t think they will save it and reheat it for someone else.
LR: It’s probably like hotel shampoo bottles. If you don’t use them, they throw them out.
LC: Some airlines don’t offer food. Maybe flying budget airlines is the environmental choice! They don’t bring food on the plane unless you decided to buy it.
It would be interesting to research what happens to the food that no one eats. I’d like to have a way to indicate that when I’m buying my ticket: “I’m bringing my own food, don’t have a meal for me.”
How do we effect that change? Do we write letters to the airline? We could ask if they are using compostables, for instance. And if they are using compostables, do they actually compost them or do they end up in the landfill?
When people have the time and energy to ask those questions and request an answer from someone in the company, it slowly changes policies. 15 years ago, no one asked about recycling.
LR: Tell me about your rider.
LC: Our rider says that we have our own water bottles and we need access to a tap to refill our bottles. Also, we like a pitcher of water backstage. We don’t want any single-use plastic in the chain. Some venues also provide glasses, which is fine.
We did a bunch of shows in Scandinavia and everyone was like, it’s so great to see that in your rider. The venues were excited. But at some venues, it’s harder.
You can tell when you’re dealing with a venue that’s hip to it and a venue where it’s the first time they’ve been asked. In our rider we explain what we’re doing. We say that we don’t use single-use plastic if possible.
Hopefully, for the person who’s reading it and the person setting up the venue, you’re changing how they deal with future artists.
LR: You’re changing the perception of what artists might be looking for.
LC: That’s what I’m trying to focus on. I’m not always going to be perfect. Not everyone in my band is always going to be perfect. We’re trying to do our best and raise awareness. When we walk on stage with four water bottles and put them down on stage, we’re doing that in front of a whole audience.
LR: Is your audience aware of everything else you’re doing to tour plastic-free? Is that something you talk about?
LC: We post about Plastic-Free July on social media. We try to share our journey. People mention it to us after shows at the merch table so the conversation continues in person.