Eilidh McLaughlin is co-founder of Clean Scene, a climate action collective exploring alternative futures for the dance music community, and is founder of Creative-Sustainability – a consultancy working with creatives to challenge climate breakdown. In April 2021, Clean Scene produced Last Night a DJ took a Flight, a report which explores the carbon footprint of touring DJs and looks at alternatives for changing this model.

In this article from Vision 2025 Eilidh talks about why Clean Scene set out to create the report, what they discovered and the areas they identified as overarching themes for consideration in the move towards cleaner, greener, and more equitable future for dance music:

“In summer 2019 (following a Tweet from one of our original members calling out DJs and their high carbon footprints) Clean Scene was born – a climate action collective exploring alternative futures for the dance music community. Through our work we aim to shift perspectives and rethink our scene’s impact on the planet. While our core team (Eilidh, Eva and Fallon) work across different areas of dance music, we are connected through a shared need to create a cleaner, greener, and more equitable future for dance music.

Our first project was an agency level carbon calculator to help DJs and events easily evaluate their carbon footprints, but unfortunately, it was put on hold due to COVID. Over the past year, we decided to shift our focus to research, and pulled our findings into a report to show how our industry is impacting the climate crisis. Our aim is to inspire collective action.

The report titled ‘Last Night a DJ Took a Flight: Exploring the carbon footprint of touring DJs and looking towards alternative futures within the dance music industry’ was born out of a need to understand the impact our industry has on the planet. Before challenging the status quo and shifting practices, we felt we first needed to understand what was actually going on – and the figures were staggering.

Please read the full article on Vision 2025.
Photo in the header is from Domagoj Ćosić  Unsplash.com