KT Tunstall is going carbon neutral on tour, but admits she will be criticised for flying around the world.
The singer, 46, previously planted a forest in Peebles and has signed a deal with American company Reverb which helps acts go green.
But she said she is on a mission to cut out her carbon footprint completely after making mistakes in the past that people could use against her.
She said: “The forest in Peebles is on my list of pilgrimages to go and see whatever Tunstall Forest looks like and see how it’s doing.
“I’ve been involved in this for nearly 20 years and it’s really tough because there’s no silver bullet.
“For a while I was using biofuels for my tour buses and it turned out that wasn’t a great idea because they were cutting down foliage to grow monoculture crops so it’s a real trial and error.
“That’s when it gets hard as a musician advocating for stuff because you can be in the firing line of that misstep. It can get pretty tiring when you’re really trying but someone is going, ‘but you get on a plane’.
“Yeah, if I want to do a gig in your town I’m going to have to get on a plane because nobody has invented a green plane but when they do I’ll definitely buy a ticket.”
She added: “In the meantime, just because you’re in a system doesn’t mean you can’t criticise it.
“It’s all right to ask and advocate for new options.”
The BRIT award-winning star, who shot to fame in 2004 with her chart-topping debut album Black Horse & The Cherry Tree and has had a string of million-selling records, was inspired to go all out to help the planet after a trip of a lifetime in 2018.
She headed to Peru with the Reverb chief Adam Gardner, his environmentalist wife, Lauren Sullivan, Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine and Dave Matthews Band bass player Stefan Lessard.
She met indigenous community member Diana Rios, whose father was murdered by loggers illegally chopping wood to be used in guitars.
“We went down to the Peruvian Amazon because illegal wood was turning up in guitars,” KT said.
“The indigenous communities are the warriors of the forest.
“Wood was deliberately not being marked where it was from and the offshoot of this was that indigenous tribes and community members were being murdered by loggers who were trying to come in and take this old hardwood.
“So we went down there to raise the profile of one of those murder trials.”
She added: “Diana seemed a meek and beautiful girl who was quiet and uncomfortable but as we got deeper and deeper into the forest she started to come out of her shell. By the time we got to where she lived in the forest with her community she was wearing this bright electric blue kaftan, all this amazing jewellery and had painted her face with all these symbols.
“She painted my face with all the symbols which was one of the most special things anyone has done for me.”
KT took time to go piranha fishing with Diana. “We went out on this raft in the middle of a pond and she got a piece of bamboo and string out and caught a piranha for dinner,’ she said.
“Just seeing someone in complete symbiosis with nature and living that way reminded me there is so much to learn from these communities.
“This is where the vast majority of Western medicine comes from and to think we are going in there and cutting it down for furniture is absolutely mad and beggars belief.”
KT will be speaking about her efforts to Jo Whiley for Radio 2 Goes Green tonight as part of a week of BBC programmes about the environment in collaboration with The One Show.
She has cut out wasteful backstage riders and the use of disposable plastic while on the road. KT said: “Touring is what you would call carbon expensive.
“So it’s really looking at ways of minimising the impact and trying to change habits to make that a bit healthier.
“When I’m touring I work with Reverb that helps me get advance information to venues saying, can we please use recyclable cups rather than plastic cups and plastic reusable souvenir ones that people can buy and take home?
“Cutting down on riders too as there’s bad habits within the music business of putting in this list of things you want when 70 per cent of it goes in the bin, and choosing hotels that have good environmental policies. Even if you are playing a little club it is such a huge amount of organisation.
“It’s usually five or six people up to one of these bigger tours, for example, where it’s 70 people to get around and 20 trucks. It’s just absolutely bananas.”
KT is also upset to think a new generation of young people will not be able to enjoy nature as she did.
The singer, who is from St Andrews, said: “I grew up in a little town of 10,000 people so we were just on our bikes from eight in the morning until eight at night, and down on the beach enjoying the freedom of nature.
“I grew up camping with my folks. We were a very outdoorsy family.
“Nature’s always been a real inspiration for me creatively.
“I’m happiest out in nature. Just the thought of kids growing up and not having that free and beautiful relationship with the natural world and all the climate change information coming out is just terrifying.
“Thinking that a kid could grow up and not have access to that basic human right of enjoying the planet in its natural form.
“There’s a real existential worry that in 50 years things will look very different. It’s really heartbreaking.
“So the label helped me work out how to be useful in that way. We carbon neutralised. We planted a bunch of trees in Scotland as the records sold.”
● KT Tunstall speaks to Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 2, from 7pm to 9pm this evening as part of the Radio 2 Goes Green week in collaboration with the One Show – also on BBC Sounds.
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