The Quest To Make The Great White Way Greener

In honor of Earth Day, GreenDimes, the largest, most trusted full-service company that gets rid of junk mail today teamed up with Broadway. On April 22nd and 23rd every person that saw the musicals Xanadu, Spring Awakening and Legally Blonde received a free Platinum subscription to Green Dimes. Here,  GreenDimes founder Pankaj Shah and Producer Tara Smith talk to BWW about how this program came about and their goals to make The Great White Way a greener place.

Faetra Petillo: Tell us how this project started with GreenDimes, were you approached or did they approach you?
 
Tara Smith: About a year ago I was watching a show and they did a special about "going green" and I found out about the service GreenDimes so I signed up for it. And about two months ago I had received an e-mail from GreenDimes on a night that I couldn't sleep. I had woken at 5am and was going through my e-mails and this e-mail popped up from GreenDimes- and it was more of a letter that you would receive from a business that you had invested in. It was giving us an update on how the company was doing financially and what the next steps and goals were and I thought that they had something really valuable that Broadway shows need - which is an outreach to a lot of people. We are constantly doing e-mail blasts over at Xanadu. The owner of GreenDimes had written the letter and had put his personal information on the letter- his cell phone number and his e-mail. So I wrote back to him at five in the morning and I thought I wouldn't hear back but why not try…and he literally e-mailed me back five minutes later and I was shocked. He had to be in New York because his company is based out of Paolo Alto, California and we just started talking over the internet about his company and about Xanadu and how much I really loved his service. So we met up that same day about doing some kind of partnership together.  And that's how it started.
 
FP: From there, how did you have to approach the shows to set it up? Did they receive it well? 
 
TS:  Pankaj came to New York a second time a few weeks later and saw Xanadu and he loved the show. Originally we were talking about him doing some e-mail blasts for us and we in turn would do something at the theater for GreenDimes. So he got on the phone with his marketing team and I then put our marketing team in touch with them and we started discussing who else we could get to be a part of this.  It seemed like a natural fit with our relationship to go to Spring Awakening and Legally Blonde.
 
FP:  What exactly did the patrons that saw the shows on Tuesday and Wednesday receive from Green Dimes? How was it received or announced at the performances? 
 
TS: They received  a twenty dollar voucher for GreenDimes Premium Service which also then plants five trees on their behalf.  We did a pre-show announcement to let them know about the program and after the announcement we got a nice large round of applause as appreciation, which was great.
 
FP: Do you think you will do this again next year?
 
TS: Absolutely. Xanadu really wants to try to move forward and make our show carbon neutral and this was a part of that plan to go forward with that in the future.
 
FP:  In terms of making Broadway greener, what do you mean by carbon neutral? And what do you think shows can do to make their productions more environmentally friendly? 
 
TS:  The big things are with lighting and trying to figure out if there's a way to make sure the theaters are recycling. And it's also buying carbon off set.  I'm really excited that the other shows jumped on board and I hope this is just the beginning. We are big lighting shows and there's a lot of energy and materials that go into it. We can all be more conscious about the materials we use and how much energy we put out there and thinking about how we can conserve.
 
FP: Are you hoping that next year more shows jump on board? 
 
TS:  Absolutely! We're hoping to expand.
 
FP: So Pankaj, tell us about your end of things, how you got this project rolling. 
 
Pankaj Shah: It was really all Tara- I had sent out an email about the company and I heard back from her right away at about five in the morning and we met up in New York. We hit it off, and I got to know her and got to see Xanadu and I thought it would be great to team up with Broadway. I give her all the credit, she was really an angel in getting Legally Blonde and Spring Awakening excited about it.
 
FP: Can you tell us a little bit about GreenDimes and what you guys do?
 
PS: It started in August of 2006. We had the goal to marry social good and capitalism. There wasn't really a ton of thought behind it, believe it or not. I more just thought, 'This is an interesting problem and I want to do something about it'. Our junk mail program was the first thing I thought of because everyone gets junk mail and doesn't like it and I thought we could do something about it and be the activists in getting rid of it.
 
FP: What steps do you think the Broadway community can take to make our shows greener? 
 
PS: There are a handful of things I think. First on the Playbill side, maybe to eliminate waste only give them out to the people that want them. I'm not sure if that is possible, but it is one idea. There's also a lot of affordable and environmentally friendly material available out there for sets and lighting and I think that would be a step in the right direction.

For more information on GreenDimes and how to eliminate your own junk mail for a good cause please visit www.greendimes.com.