Coldplay Pause Touring Over Environmental Concerns

On Monday, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin announced to BBC News that the band will not be going on tour for their new album, Everyday Life, until they can offer carbon-neutral concerts.

“We’re taking time over the next year or two to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial,” he said.

Coldplay’s last tour was in 2016 to 2017 for their album A Head Full of Dreams, which saw them play 122 shows around the world.

“Our next tour will be the best possible version of a tour like that environmentally,” he said. “We would be disappointed if it’s not carbon neutral. The hardest thing is the flying side of things. But, for example, our dream is to have a show with no single use plastic, to have it largely solar powered. We’ve done a lot of big tours at this point. How do we turn it around so it’s not so much taking as giving?”

Other big-ticket artists have addressed carbon emissions and environmental impact at their shows in recent months. Billie Eilish pledged that her next tour, kicking off in March, will be “as green as possible,” with a ban on plastic straws and an “Eco-Village” with climate education resources set up at every venue. The 1975 have pledged to plant a tree for every ticket sold to their shows and have stopped producing new merchandise T-shirts, instead screen-printing new designs on recycled shirts.