Whole Life Times: Party Like You Give a Damn

April 2007 | Features

Party Like You Give a Damn

Rock out to live music, recycle your water bottle, and wait in line to use the porta-potty turned eco-art-installation. It’s all in a day’s work for LA’s festival circuit do-gooders, Global Inheritance.

By Caroline Ryder

if you’re a live music fan, chances are you’ve already come across Global Inheritance at a festival somewhere. Perhaps you handed in empty beer cans at their Warped Tour recycling store. Maybe you dumped bottles in their decorated recycling bins at Coachella, or admired one of their artistic Porta-Potties. You may have used the Tour Rider program at the Hollywood Bowl or taken the Metro to one of their Public Display of Affection concerts, where the only means of admission is a used train or bus ticket. And you may have wondered what it all means.

Global Inheritance was founded by Eric Ritz, a former skate rat who became involved in social and environmental activism while a student at the University of Oregon, circa 1992. Problem was, in his tapered jeans and t-shirts, he didn’t look much like an activist. In fact he stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of tie-dye. “If you were an activist back then, you had to fit this certain hippie mold,” says Ritz. “You had to love drum circles and tie-dye and Frisbee golf. I wasn’t part of that mold, and even though I cared deeply about environmental and social activism, people treated me differently.” This experience helped shape the philosophy behind Global Inheritance, a ground-breaking non-profit bringing pro-peace, pro-environment messages to kids who don’t necessarily fit the “green teen” stereotype.

Global Inheritance was born from Fashion Peace, the socially-conscious fashion initiative Ritz founded in 2002. He invited a cluster of hip, urban apparel lines (think Triple 5 Soul, American Apparel and Diesel) to donate items, which people then decorated with anti-hate crime, malaria awareness and global warming messages, among others. Prior to founding Fashion Peace, Ritz had worked with the Truth Campaign against the tobacco industry, and was partially inspired by their approach. “Back then there weren’t a lot of non-profits that were cutting-edge or really pushing the envelope creatively,” he says. “But the Truth Campaign really did a good job in terms of how they marketed themselves and targeted subcultures. It was refreshing.”

Realizing that his goals for the organization lay beyond fashion, he changed the group’s name to Global Inheritance and re-thought his strategy. A former concert promoter (Ritz had worked with Bill Silva Presents and Frontier Touring, promoting shows for everyone from Brooks & Dunn to Phish), he decided that shows and festivals were the ideal venue to reach his target audience. He approached the organizers of Lollapalooza and persuaded them to let him run a t-shirt design competition on the site. Then he opened the first TRASHed Recycling Store as part of the 2004 Warped Tour, where young people exchanged beer cans and water bottles for merch, from autographed skateboards to T-shirts. The kids loved it. “People are very open to new ideas when they are at festivals,” says Ritz. “What we want is for people to go ‘Wow this is really cool, I want to do something similar myself and figure out a way to motivate my friends and inspire others.’”

Global Inheritance has developed a presence at the X Games and most recently, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where they invited high-profile artists to makeover 96-gallon recycling bins for the site, and set up a functional art exhibit of elaborately decorated Porta Potties. Their “Public Display of Affection” events aim to fight traffic congestion in urban areas and get people back on public transport. “What we’re trying to do is fit the message to the audience, rather than making the audience adjust to us,” explains Ritz. “Our core goal is to get people to feel comfortable with getting involved with causes, while not making them fell like they are being marketed to.” Art rockers The Secret Machines played in downtown LA for the first PDA event, attracting 2,000 music lovers. Afterwards, a “ton of kids” went up to Ritz and told him it was the first time they had ever taken the subway. “It was a great feeling,” Ritz reports.

Global Inheritance’s trend-savvy approach has not gone unnoticed by big business — Virgin Mobile, Fuel TV and Redbull have already hired the org to custom-design recycling bins as part of a marketing drive. Which is great in terms of fundraising — but doesn’t Ritz feel like he’s, well, sleeping with the enemy? Not in the least, says Ritz. In fact, Ritz says he’d party with Wal-Mart if it meant more kids were exposed to a different way of thinking. “These brands, they spends hundreds of millions of dollars marketing themselves,” explain Ritz. “And a lot of young people relate to these brands and want to be affiliated with them. They have a lot of power — what we’re doing is trying to get them to use their power for good.”

A freelancer for Swindle magazine, LA Times and Women’s Health, and contributor to the LA Weekly ’s Style Council blog, Caroline Ryder last wrote for Whole Life Times on eco fashion.

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