Billie Eilish’s commitment to sustainability has been a defining feature of her career, both in her personal life and as a global superstar. The young singer recently opened up to Billboard alongside her mother, Maggie Baird, about her sustainability efforts, with some fans speculating she could be shading a particular pop star – none other than Taylor Swift.
Eilish states in her interview that she uses 100% recycled materials when producing her vinyls, even using scraps to add pops of color in different record variations. When asked more about this, the Grammy winner passionately responded, “We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging… I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is. It is right in front of our faces and people are just getting away with it left and right.”
While it’s not clear if Eilish was actually calling out Swift, fans on social media certainly think so. Pop Base posted an excerpt from the interview on Twitter, sending fans into a frenzy as to whether or not the 22-year-old singer was shading Swift for being wasteful. “We know exactly who she is talking about,” remarked one X, formerly known as Twitter, user. Another user exclaimed, “she clocked Taylor so bad I’m crying.”
Eilish elaborated in her interview, “I find it really frustrating as somebody who really goes out of my way to be sustainable and do the best that I can and try to involve everybody in my team in being sustainable — and then it’s some of the biggest artists in the world making f–king 40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more.”
Universal Music Group, in collaboration with Reverb, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing sustainability in the music scene, awarded Eillish with the first Universal Music Group x Reverb Amplifier Award in early 2023. This award is designed to recognize artists who notably contribute to reducing their environmental impact and actively support nonprofit causes, something the All I Ever Wanted singer does effortlessly.
This is quite the contrast from pop singer Swift, 34, who has received backlash for her unnecessary C02 emissions from her private jet. Celebrity jet tracker Jack Sweeny publicly posted on X (@SwiftJetNextDay) the pop star’s routes, with her private jet flights producing 77.8342 tons of carbon dioxide between December 25 and January 30, 2023.
