A LIFE ON THE OCEANWAVE
Singer Jack Johnson toils to clean the planet
J ack Johnson grew up in paradise: the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. Across the postcardperfect island, he surfed, played guitar and surfed some more. But as a teenager, as early as the late ’80s, he noticed waves of plastic battering the shores.
“I would be going over to surf on the east side of Oahu and started noticing these bits of plastic,” Johnson said, ahead of tonight’s show with Lake Street Dive at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield. “I wondered why I only saw these pieces on the east side, then it became really obvious. It was the wind. The east side of Hawaiian islands had become almost a filter to collect all this plastic.”
Johnson, a man who has sold more than 10 million records, will happily talk about songwriting, guitar playing or surfing, but what he is most passionate about is cleaning up the planet. Also a documentary filmmaker, Johnson helped director Ian Cheney make “The Smog of the Sea,” a new film that looks at the trillions of tons of tiny plastic shards that permeate the world’s oceans.
“This area of ocean (in the North Atlantic) we explored became the concept of ‘away’ to me,” Johnson said. “Like when you throw something away, where is ‘away’? Well, it was here.
“We hear of these myths of huge plastic islands, but we found what looked like a beautiful blue ocean,” he said. “Then, when we put out the collector behind us, an hour later, there were all these microplastics in it. We started to see just how widespread the problem is, how these plastics have become part of the food chain.”
For Johnson, the weeklong trip through the Sargasso Sea documented in the movie connected to everything he works for. The concert business has always been one of the most wasteful industries. With lots of help from the Maine nonprofit Reverb, which was started by local environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her husband, Adam Gardner of Guster, Johnson’s backstage has been plasticfree since 2005.
Environmentally friendly acts have followed in Johnson’s footsteps, and now it’s not uncommon to find major tours that also have organic farm-to-table catering and tour buses fueled by biodiesel. But with the White House taking a step backward, do any of these impressive but relatively small-scale efforts matter?
“My optimism comes from being on the road and seeing how passionate young people are about these issues,” Johnson said. “Then you find out in the news that the U.S. has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, and it is just a huge setback. But I also think that things will change. This isn’t a dictatorship, (President Trump) won’t be around forever, and in the meantime, he’s firing up a generation to do great work.”
Johnson provides a model for optimism and involvement. Through album sales, touring and more, he has generated over $30 million for charity. And he still does hands-on beach cleanups on his island paradise. He knows that, yes, we need to save the planet for the children, but we also need perfect beaches to surf right now.