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A message on the climate crisis from Cambridge Audio MD, Stuart George

There’s no music on a dead planet.

I was struck the moment I saw those words - a statement coined, by ‘Music Declares Emergency’, who call for artists and music industry professionals to both make and demand change in response to the climate crisis.

Cambridge Audio Joins EarthPercent

It’s very simple: Our planet is becoming uninhabitable.

Earlier this month, a major study suggested that we’re on the brink of 5 major climate tipping points. The risks are profound and yet, massively underestimated: It feels like the people with power to effect large scale change, either don't care or are putting their heads in the sand.

My own nearest and dearest have heard enough of my forecasting imminent environmental demise and societal collapse. And frankly, I'm frustrated with merely talking but not acting.

That’s not to say that we haven’t been taking first steps on what is sure to be a long journey to being more sustainable at Cambridge Audio.

Recently we’ve become a Founding Donor of EarthPercent, a music industry charity which directs meaningful support to those at the forefront of climate action while reducing our impact on the planet, as an industry and as a global society. Money raised from the music industry will fund the most credible and impactful climate actions and environmental causes that deliver transformative change.

  • Improving environmental impacts of the music industry
  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting clean energy
  • Securing climate justice and fair environmental stewardship
  • Advancing systemic economic, legal and policy change
  • Protecting, conserving and restoring nature

While Cambridge Audio is the first audio brand to become a Founding Donor, others include the artists Coldplay, Billie Eilish and iconic producer Brian Eno - who is a co-founder of the charity.

By supporting the charity’s operations, we ensure that 100% of funds from artists and other music companies can go to their grant partners. And just as importantly, we also fulfil a role as ambassadors of EarthPercent and its work, encouraging other organisations to pledge a small percentage of their income to EarthPercent.

Most of us want to do something to help against the climate crisis but we simply don’t know how. I believe that what EarthPercent is trying to do is meaningful and important. They’re in a space that has the potential to make a huge difference, considering not just the wealth of the music industry, but also that there are probably a lot of people who have the desire to help fight the climate crisis - more so than there are deniers, I suspect. And EarthPercent can unite them all together, combine that goodwill, to focus a lot of effort and funding into the right areas at scale.

At Cambridge Audio, we’re still at the beginning of our sustainability journey. I’m still educating myself about it. We’ve been quietly working on making things better, starting by looking at the materials we use in both our products and our packaging to make them as recyclable as possible - cutting down on plastic and using more cardboard. We’re working on reducing the lifetime power consumption of products and making them with more sustainable materials, like the Richlite panels of the Evo streaming amplifier.

One of our biggest changes has been the reduction of air freight, which made up over a fifth of our total carbon footprint in 2020. Year-on-year we have seen a 58% reduction in CO2e produced by airfreight. 

We’re looking to partners that can help us along our way, from warehouses that offset carbon emissions, to a music charity that’s fighting climate change by uniting the industry into collective action. I look forward to updating you on what more we’re doing in due course.

Stuart George