Billie Eilish actively engages her fans to act on social and environmental issues. Concertgoers can pledge to eat one plant-based meal a day for 30 days through Support and Feed, for example. Founded by Eilish’s mother, Maggie Baird, the organization calls for a shift to an equitable, plant-based food system.

The music industry is not known for being a sustainability pioneer, but for the millions of Billie Eilish fans, there’s an opportunity to take a literal bite out of the climate change crisis. Concertgoers can take the Support and Feed pledge to eat one plant-based meal each day for 30 days.

“If 10,000 people at a concert take a pledge to eat one plant-based meal per day for 30 days, it would save 7 million gallons of water,” Maggie Baird, founder of Support and Feed and mother of Billie Eilish and her musician brother Finneas, said last month at Climate Week in New York City.

With an average attendance of 1.15 million people at Eilish concerts, the potential impact is considerable. The hope is that the awareness remains long after the concert. “We like to say that people come for Billie, but they stay for the planet,” Baird said.

Along with Support and Feed, Eilish and her team partner with Reverb, an environmental nonprofit that works with musicians, concerts and venues to green their events, while engaging fans to take environmental and social action. During Eilish’s Happier Than Ever tour, 133,500 fan actions were taken, including over 3,622 adopting the plant-based meal pledge, according to a Reverb report.

Riding on a music industry trend

While Eilish is just one performer, the plant-based pledge and other sustainability-focused aspects of her tours are part of a global trend in the music industry, in large part due to demand from fans. Some 69 percent of attendees at music festivals globally in 2024 favored nature-conscious events.

British hiphop legends Massive Attack offered entirely vegan catering at a festival in Bristol, England, in August. The event, Act 1.5, is named for the global temperature rise limit set in the Paris Climate Agreement.

This is a trend that Baird hoped to see for years, she said at the Nest Climate Campus event. Baird emphasized the link between food systems and climate change.

The vast majority of the world’s farmland is used for meat and dairy, with livestock accounting for 80 percent of agricultural use. A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a recent study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Putting equity on the menu

There are other overlooked dimensions to the challenge, Baird said. The shift to plant-based eating can also simultaneously tackle issues around health, access to nutritious food and equity. Two decades of studies underscore the health benefits associated with plant-based diets. Yet access to such food is often unavailable to marginalized communities. Community-based food systems can make a difference, as TriplePundit previously reported.

“I think of all the movements in the climate space, this may be the most overlooked, but in many ways, the most exciting and joy-filled one,” she said. “At Support and Feed we provide delicious, plant-based, restaurant-quality meals that anyone would be honored to eat, and at the same time helping the local economy because we are purchasing those meals from small community businesses.”

Since Support and Feed’s founding in Los Angeles, California, during the pandemic, the nonprofit has worked with over 80 community organizations, 150 volunteers, and supported over 60 local restaurants to deliver nearly 600,000 plant-based meals and pantry items.

It has expanded to Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Hampton Roads and Washington D.C. It also has a presence in another 30 cities globally, including the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia. It aims to have a footprint in cities that are most impacted by food insecurity and climate change.

Missing ingredient to the food system challenge

The intersectionality of the food system equity and climate crisis challenges is often missed by other food-focused organizations, Baird said. To remedy this, Support and Feed has three interconnected programs.

The first is a customized meal delivery program that addresses hunger in local communities by building cohorts with restaurants, grocers and food rescue partners. It also runs educational programs to shine a light on how food equity is tied to the climate crisis, and its disproportionate impact on low-income and historically marginalized communities. And a third program boosts food accessibility and wellness by helping children and youth learn to grow their own food and pollinator habitats.

“Food is about the climate crisis, it’s about equity, it’s about health — my passion is working at the intersection of all of those,” Baird said.

Awareness can make all the difference

Growing up in western Colorado, Baird became a plant-based eater who cared for the environment at a young age and raised her children with the same love for eating plants. “Food is my love language,” she said.

At the same time, Baird said she recognizes that not everyone grew up with plant-based eating or is motivated enough by climate and environmental issues to continue to eat that way.

While 73 percent of Americans think plant proteins are healthy — compared to just 39 percent who think animal proteins are healthy — only 32 percent say environmental sustainability is a serious factor in their food-buying decisions, according to a study by researchers at Virginia Tech. Part of that gap might be because it is not easy to know the environmental impact of food choices. Most of the survey respondents said if the information was easier to access, it would influence their decisions.

That is why education is such an important part of Support and Feed, Baird said. Like the information Eilish’s team shares with fans and the dedicated sustainability page on the Billie Eilish website inviting fans to take action in multiple ways.

“We’re really trying to break a lot of stereotypes and myths,” Baird said. “It’s not about taking something away from people. That just doesn’t fly with people. Food is culture, food is love, food is a lot of our identity and it just plain doesn’t work to come in and say, ‘You need to do this.’ So we try to meet people where they are. We ask people to start with one fully plant-based meal a day for 30 days. We offer recipes and guidance.”

It’s a life mission that Baird said she finds satisfying on many levels. “We help people understand that if you take a little step, if you think about this each day and make substitutions, find some new foods you love, then all of us together make a massive impact,” she said. “You can be part of a solution, and it doesn’t really have to hurt.”