Detroit Jazz Festival, DTE Energy Foundation partner with Schupan Recycling on festival recycling

Detroit Jazz Festival increases efforts to minimize environmental impact

DETROIT, MI - This Labor Day Weekend the Detroit Jazz Festival, in partnership with the DTE Energy Foundation and Schupan Recycling, is enhancing its greening program to save more recyclable materials than ever before from ending up in landfills.

With a six-year history of reducing the Festival’s carbon footprint, the DTE Energy Foundation is prepared to reduce, reuse and recycle tons of waste at this year’s four-day celebration. Since 2011, the Greening Program has recycled nearly 10 tons. Additionally, since the inception of the DTE Greening Program, the Detroit Jazz Festival has reduced the use of unnecessary energy and supplies and switched to reusable table clothes, skirts and signage, saving nearly 900 pounds of plastic and packaging.

“The Detroit Jazz Festival brings thousands of jazz enthusiasts to Detroit every Labor Day weekend making it a great opportunity to showcase the beauty of Detroit and educate people about the DTE Greening Program and how to be green in their everyday lives,” said Faye Nelson, DTE Energy vice president, Public Affairs, and Foundation president. “This year we are looking forward to expanding the program and implementing new and improved processes in an effort to collect more recyclables than ever before.”

For the second year, the DTE Energy Foundation’s Greening of the Detroit Jazz Festival program is partnering with Schupan Recycling based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Schupan will be providing 140 new, convenient recycling containers, bringing the total number of containers to nearly 500 on-site. In addition to traditional recycling efforts, this year Schupan also will be providing back-of-house organic recycling for food vendors to dispose of leftover food produce, cigarette butt recycling and wastewater recycling.

In an effort to improve the Greening Program’s effectiveness and to motivate patrons to recycle, coordinators have added a second information booth, easily accessible to festival-goers, to increase awareness of the recycling options available during the festival. The Greening Booths will be staffed with volunteers ready to answer questions about recycling and show visitors samples of processed, shredded recycled material. To make recycling more convenient for festival-goers and enhance the volume of materials properly recycled, this year’s event will feature an increased number of Greening Ambassador volunteers as well.

Additional Greening Program efforts include:

• Going paperless through the use of digital artist applications and by using mobile apps, text messages and emails to keep fans up-to-date with stage schedules, event details and artist bios.

• Decreasing the need for disposable water bottles by providing Festival staff and volunteers with five-gallon reusable coolers.
• Providing compostable cups and plates to Festival food caterers.

• V.I.P. hotel packages offered by the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, the official hotel of the Detroit Jazz Festival, encouraging Festival attendees to spend the weekend downtown and reduce fuel use to and from the celebration over the weekend. More information can be found at http://detroitjazzfest.com/travel.html.

• WEMU-sponsored round trip shuttle service that will carry Festival attendees from various locations to the Detroit Jazz Festival and back for only $15, saving thousands of vehicle miles.

“We are elated to once again to be a partner of the DTE Greening Program. Each year we are amazed by the amount of waste this program keeps out of landfills and hope that 2014 will be a record breaking year,” said Gretchen Valade, chair of the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation board of directors. “This program is a great way for us to show our commitment to the environment and to the city of Detroit. As the world’s largest free jazz festival, with almost 26 percent of attendees coming from out of state, the Detroit Jazz Festival is a good opportunity to highlight all that Detroit has accomplished and to leave festival-goers with a positive and lasting impression that will keep them coming back year after year.”

To remain the world’s largest free jazz festival, the Detroit Jazz Festival relies on the support of its generous supporters. Festival supporters can donate online at www.detroitjazzfest.com or by texting the keyword KIF5 to 20222 from their mobile phones. At the event, the DTE Energy Foundation also will have “Keep it Free” kiosks set up enabling attendees to donate to the organization as well as purchase the official Festival program, which will be printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified recycled paper.

About the Detroit Jazz Festival
The Detroit Jazz Festival is an independent, non-profit organization that presents jazz and educational workshops throughout the year. Recently voted number two in North America in a JazzTimes reader’s poll, the Detroit Jazz Festival is the largest free jazz festival in the world and a major tourist attraction for the City of Detroit, with 23 percent of its audience coming from out of state.

The Festival receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Erb Family Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Kresge Foundation. Major corporate partners include JPMorgan Chase, Carhartt, Quicken Loans, Comcast and Mack Avenue Records. Additional partners include Absopure, AT&T, Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe, Fathead, FirstMerit Bank, Budweiser, Greektown Casino, MGM Grand Detroit, MotorCity Casino Hotel, Opportunity Detroit and St. John Providence Health System. Media partners include DownBeat, Hour Detroit, JazzTimes, MetroTimes and Fox 2. The festival’s Greening Program, now entering Phase IV, is supported by a generous grant from the DTE Energy Foundation. For more information, visit www.detroitjazzfest.com.