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The Support+Feed founder — and mother of two Grammy winners — speaks with THR about plant-based eating and how the business can have a better eco footprint.
By Nicole Fell
Environmental activist and Support+Feed founder Maggie Baird has been working toward a more sustainable future at every stage of her life. At no point in her journey did it become more evident that work needed to be done than when her children — Grammy winners Billie Eilish and Finneas — entered the music industry.
“At the time it seemed like no one was talking about it,” Baird tells The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom, recalling when Eilish first broke through as a touring superstar in the late 2010s. “Oh, the waste, the plastic water bottles, the gift boxes, the packaging, the merch, just everything was overwhelming. On the road it’s exhausting, and so convenience becomes the name of the game. It was like, ‘Wait, we’ve created a world.’ We are vegan, we are living very sustainably with all our choices, and now we’ve stepped into a world.”
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It’s a particularly sensitive topic for Baird, 66, a lifetime environmentalist and climate change activist who has spent much of her life looking to preserve nature. It started in childhood, as Baird recalls avoiding eating anything her father would catch if he went hunting or fishing, and carried well into adulthood, as she and her family installed solar power and removed grass at home and wrapped Christmas gifts in bags she sewed.
Recalling Eilish’s early touring days, Baird encountered apathy as she was told the wasteful nature of the industry was “just the way it is.” Not accepting the status quo, she found support in such organizations as Reverb, a nonprofit dedicated to creating a more sustainable music industry, introduced to her by Coldplay’s Chris Martin. By 2020, she founded her own nonprofit, Support+Feed, which seeks to address the climate crisis by championing plant-based foods and tackling food insecurity.
“I started to connect and would ask questions,” she explains, encouraging other touring musicians to do the same. “Be curious about what you’re doing, and ask if it can be done better. For artists especially, you shouldn’t have to do it all yourself. If you have any kind of a team, your job is to empower them to say to everybody you work with, ‘This is important to me.’ If we’re going to have a lunch meeting, let’s have a plant-based meal. If we’re going to make merch, let’s make it as sustainable as possible. Come to me with the options.”
With Support+Feed, Baird is taking aim at one of the most direct causes of the climate crisis with food, hoping that her and Eilish’s reach in the music business will cast a much wider net.
“Getting people to understand that what we eat matters, and every time you can make a more sustainable choice, make more plant-based food, that makes a major impact,” Baird says. “The music industry has so much power to do that. Every arena, every stadium, every venue is serving so many people that if you make your menu 80 percent plant-based, you’re going to make such a big impact.”
Baird had the idea for the organization during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the shutdown showing how much people were going to need food. Focusing on more sustainable plant-based options was a clear conclusion.
“When we stepped into the world of food insecurity and food equity — to which I will say I was woefully unaware — my eyes were really opened by the extent of the inequitable food systems,” Baird says. “We just found that there weren’t any organizations of size and making a connection between what we eat and the climate crisis and health and community support.”
Baird says her nonprofit was meant to bridge the gap, explaining that the link between climate change and food insecurity are linked in several ways. “Not only in the cause of how we got here, but where we’re going, to end up with food scarcity and food shortages, so we have to combine our efforts,” she says.
Baird emphasizes that Support+Feed works to feed people delicious as well as nourishing meals, an important decision given that plant-based meals aren’t always an exciting prospect for non-vegetarians. Support+Feed’s provided meal might be the first time a person is knowingly eating something plant-based. The organization also hopes to increase access and awareness of plant-based food.
“We have to provide access to people who are deprived of that through local or financial means. In the world of food insecurity and food inequity, L.A. is a prime example,” she explains. “In the first year, I would be traveling to areas of the city, delivering meals [to people] that had no grocery stores, no produce and [living in a place that was] two degrees hotter than where I was coming from because of the lack of trees and green spaces.”
With Baird, Eilish has made significant efforts in improving her tours’ sustainability efforts, from serving plant-based food offerings for the crew backstage to bringing an “eco-action village” to her tour stops where fans can learn more about how to lower their carbon footprint. Support+Feed also offered show-goers at some stops a chance to participate in food drives. Those efforts have given Eilish’s tours an industrywide reputation, as the trade publication Pollstar announced a new sustainability award for its annual awards show, with Eilish as the namesake.
“In the 2022 tour for Billie, we took the ferry three times in the middle of the night,” Baird says. “That’s instead of [flying], because making those choices and making [sure] everybody knows these are the choices we’re going to make [is important.]”
There are many challenges the business faces in becoming greener — Baird reiterates industrywide policy change will play a huge part in genuine change — but Baird points to the fashion industry for artist merchandise as a major challenge. (On the Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour, Eilish’s shirts are made of recycled cotton and polyester, her tour posters from recycled paper.)
“People treasure their band merch probably more than they do other merch, so one could make a case [that] there’s a sustainability factor in the fact that you’re not going to throw that away, but it needs to be high quality so that it will last ethically and soundly made,” Baird says.
Baird and her children continue to push for a more sustainable future. Eilish and Support+Feed are bringing their Overheated event to two of the singer’s European tour dates.
Overheated — taking place May 9 in Berlin and July 14 in London — aims to bring together climate activists, music fans and experts for discussions and community-building. The daylong events, which Eilish has done for previous stops on her Hit Me Hard and Fast Tour, features programs that will help guests learn small actions to combat climate change. Information and ticketing information for Overheated can be found on Eilish’s website.
Baird says she doesn’t believe the music industry is any more responsible than other industries in the climate fight but says it’s uniquely positioned to make change. And the industry should focus on these efforts for its own self-interest, as extreme weather conditions from climate change have already begun to impact the business now, and those effects will only grow further pronounced.
“The touring industry is in jeopardy from the climate crisis. I don’t think people are feeling it enough yet,” she adds. “That will change as insurance policies change. When you can’t get insured for weather, suddenly you’re going to understand.”
This story appears in the April 2025 Sustainability digital issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to see the rest of the issue.
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