Musical Summer

Detroit  has a long heritage in the musical scene. That is probably one of the reasons why the summer weekends are filled with interesting musical offers, covering all different styles. We would like to share our experience of the last weeks, I am sure that although we have been busy with all these events, we have missed many other opportunities of listening to live music.

The first musical event we attended was the concert of Eminem and Rihanna, at the Comerica Park. We had bought the tickets several months in advance, but time went by and, there we were, about to see a strange but interesting duet. As many of you know, Eminem is from Detroit, and thus the crowd was cheering with special interest when he was singing, although Rihanna surely didn't leave anybody disappointed with her great voice. They also did some songs together, like the one that gave name to the concert, 'Monster', which they sang right at the end. I must say that the sound quality was not the best, which made it difficult to understand Eminem's parts. Maybe it didn't help to be a bit apart from the stage, so we basically were looking at the big screens. But some concerts are not about the music on its own, but the overall experience, which was really good


The following weekend started with our visit to the festival "Arts, Beats and Eats", in Royal Oak. As its name says, there is great offer of artistic creations, international food and varied music. We went on a sunny but windy Saturday, and ate some interesting dished (nothing healthy, but delicious ;)). We also went around the art stands, and did see cool objects and photography.

In the late evening we stayed for a concert of the group "Third Eye Blind". It started an hour late because of some few drops of rain, but in the end they did perform great and even stayed longer than they were supposed to.

 

A day later we were listening to some of the best jazz musicians in the world, in the largest free jazz festivals worldwide. Settled in the Hart Plaza and Campus Martius Park, it runs for 4 days, with more than 30 different concerts. Our cultural knowledge concerning jazz artists is very limited, so our strategy was to visit all the stages at some points during the day (basically, we more or less chose randomly the concerts that we were going to attend). But the result was splendid: all the concerts we listened to where phenomenal, we felt glad for having chosen that particular artist, and at the same time we wondered what we had missed on the other 3 stages ;) Two artist I would like to mention: The first one is  the saxophonist Joshua Redman, son of Dewey Redman, who gave an incredible concert, finishing with the best version I have heard of the song "let it be". The second would be the group of the French singer Cyrille Aimée, whose incredible voice left us astonished from the first song. 

As a European, the best thing of these festivals is to see so many people walking on the street. Normally everywhere you go in the US, people commute from place to place by car. They may need to walk from the parking lot to wherever they are going, but there's not so much of wondering around without any specific goal. As a change to everyday's not so crowded streets, this kind of events gather a numerous group of people with very varied lifestyles: students, artists, Bohemian, alternative, all wanting the same thing, spend a good time under the sun, get some tasty bites and enjoy the cultural offer of artists and singers... It is a nice way of getting the best out of the Labor Day Weekend.

The last event for this entry is the one we went to yesterday. Its name is "Dalley in the Alley", Detroit's largest community festival, located in the Cass Corridor District, in Midtown Detroit. This event is solely organized by volunteers, and contrary to the prior ones described, it is pretty laid back and relaxed (like its name suggests). While it also offers arts, beats and eats (like the festival in Royal Oak), but this one has a very different personality, much more student-like. In fact is takes place around the students' dorms. I would say that one of the main differences is in the music offer: much more alternative, covering very varied styles, and the whole brings somehow the "community" feeling, you feel more part of "it". Also some of the artistic stands show a lot of personality, there are many "new and used" stands, that trade clothes, discs and other restored objects. Many T-shirts with Detroit slogans are sold, along with old Motown albums and interesting pictures from the city. But the main point for which I would recommend to visit this event is the variety of people you see. Much more extreme than in the prior events, you feel like bring in a composition of the whole world (at least the Detroit world) concentrated in a corridor. It is a great atmosphere to spend a couple of hours listening to music and drinking beer (the official drink of the fest :))

Well, this concludes the entry about our musical experiences of the last weeks (hopefully more will come). We recommend you to visit all of them, but if I had to choose, I would say the Jazz Festival: you get a great experience, wonderful artists, and a lot of love from the city.

Thanks for reading, 

Lita & Andres

Environmental Sustainability in the US and the World

Robert Barthelmes – Goldenrod (2006)

One of the big issues in the world in general, and in the US in particular, is the use of the natural resources. Our day starts with a paper coffee cup, our snacks are packed in plastics,  we buy plastic bottles of water, everywhere we go we drive in our car, etc. We don't usually realize that our day to day life decisions affect the planet, because we are just so used to it. That's why I decided to touch some aspects of the environmental sustainability in this entry, so we can become more conscious of the effects of our decisions.

The term sustainability refers to things that keep going sustaining themselves and continue forever. In a perfect sustainable earth, humans could have access to clean air and water, food, and other resources needed to have a high quality life, allowing this same conditions for future generations. What is happening in reality is that we are abusing the resources, without considering the consequences of our product choices to the planet. There is an interesting website where you can "measure" your footprint in the planet. It also tells you how many earths would be needed if everyone in the planet would share your lifestyle (for me it was 4 earths, which is really shocking).


Sustainability is mandatory to ensure the future of the planet and the human beings. And this requires a better use of the resources, and a minimization of the waste, in fact, there shouldn't be a waste; rather the waste from the production of one product should be used as resource for the next, and so on. The so called "cradle to cradle" concept, instead of "cradle to grave".

The problem

There are many scary facts about waste, some of them we don't even realize. I will focus on US data because that is where we are living, but many places are not far from these numbers:

• Americans generate 760 kg of waste per person per year, about 2 kg per day
• 10% of rich countries’ greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
• Nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.
• Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.
• Average worldwide annual paper consumption is 48 kg per person, average per capita paper use in the USA is 333 KG. Approx. 324 L. of water is used to produce 1 kg of paper
• Americans discarded about 2,900,000 tons of aluminum in 2012. The largest source of aluminum in the MSW stream is used beverage containers and other packaging containers.
• Americans consume over 80,000,000,000  aluminum cans every year.
•  Each year American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups. Even 500 years from now, a foam coffee cup will be sitting in a landfill.
• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, most of which are tossed away.
• Americans throw away about 28,000,000,000 bottles and jars every year.
• Americans also discharge 220,000,000 car tires every year
• It is estimated that Americans waste 2,000,000 gallons of fuel each year due to under-inflated tires
• About 200 million gallons of used motor oil is illegally dumped in the US each year. A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) production, kg per person per day, World Bank 2012.

The map above shows the waste production per country. It is amazing to see how big our contribution is to the total waste.

But the way we produce waste is not justified only because of high consumption of goods (which sometimes we can't avoid); another important reason for waste is the design of the product over its lifetime. There are many products that have been designed for the "first life", and have to be disposed after that, as waste. If, in the contrary, the product had been designed up to the end, all components that form a product would be reused for a different purpose.

The solution

www.dcwastemanagement.co.uk

There is still a lot to do to minimize our footprint and approach a zero-waste life. The Waste Hierarchy shows, from the top to the bottom, the most favored options towards avoidance of waste generation.

The first and most important thing to do is a reduction of the products we consume. In our everyday lives we often don't realize that we can avoid using certain products. The best example, because it is also the biggest waste, is the food. We need to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. Another example is the amount of canned beverages, there is an interesting article that shows the effect that we could have if we have one less can per week, starting small can also have huge effects!

Reusing products is also a great way of enlarging their lifetime. Talking to friends and neighbors, you can find out that somebody wants to get rid of a good you'd like to acquire. The perfect example is books and school material, because once you've used them, they are still good for other people. Another example, if you know that somebody is having a party, you can let them know that you have stuff from a previous party they can borrow.

The third step in the hierarchy is recycling. This one has a lot of potential, because we can virtually recycle 100% of paper, aluminum cans, some plastics, etc. The fact that we are still not doing it tells us that we need to change our mindsets, but also that some changes in the infrastructure is needed to facilitate the recycling task. A trendy way to recycle is to reuse the trash located nearby to make new objects, like the instruments in the picture. If you are interested to know the cycle of recycle, follow this link, it explains how materials like paper, plastics, metals, and glass are recycled. 


Energy recovery from the waste is the fourth step in the chain. According to the EPA, energy recovery from waste is the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity, or fuel through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolization, anaerobic digestion, and landfill gas (LFG) recovery. Municipal solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 18.2 percent of these emissions in 2012. Instead of escaping into the air, LFG can be captured, converted, and used as used to generate electricity, replace fossil fuels in industrial and manufacturing operations, or upgraded to pipeline–quality gas where the gas may be used directly or processed into an alternative vehicle fuel.

The last step and least favored option is the disposal of products and goods in landfills. This is where the waste should go when there is no possible use of it nor its energy, and has to be stored in a safe way to avoid contamination of the surrounding landscape. Some of the goods, however, are banned for disposal in these facilities, such as paints, cleaners/chemicals, motor oil, batteries, and pesticides. Some communities account for safe drop off sites for these products, but there is still many regions which don't account for it. Sincerely speaking, the only thing you can do as of now is to reduce the usage of these products as much as possible. 

Conclusion

The world's development has focused on fast, growing production, to satisfy the current needs and even ensure an increasing demand. On the way, we forgot to minimize our footprint in order to live in a sustainable way. Some people say that the concept of "sustainable development" is not possible, because all development tries to rise the demand, and will not be neutral to the earth and its resources. While I am not sure of that, I can say that we didn't even try really hard, and there is a lot to do in this aspect.

There is lots of information regarding these issues in the Internet, so I am not going to give you a list, I just wanted to share a general overview, hopefully you found something interesting in it.

Thanks for reading,

Lita & Andres

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P.S.You can find the sources used in this entry here:

- http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/
- http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resources/336387-1334852610766/Chap3.pdf
- International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Discussion Paper (IIED, London, September 1996)
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997
- http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html
- http://resourcefulschools.org/facts/