Reducing Waste From Our Lives

In Amy Korst’s how-to book, The Zero Waste Lifestyle, she describes how she and her husband went from normal garbage-producing Americans to generating less than three pounds of trash per year (enough to fill a shoe box), a feat which I suppose could cause some folks to intermittently consider them role models or complete wackjobs.  Either way, just because the author’s family is “all-in” doesn’t mean the rest of us should be “all out,” and to Korst’s great credit, the message of her book isn’t one of deprivation and denouncement of all things 21^st Century, but rather an encouragement to start thinking about garbage differently and to take steps towards reducing it.  To help the reader along, she illustrates what other American’s have done – some whose goals are quite lofty, others whose missions are more modest.

Prior to reading her book, I felt like my family was already practicing what I consider to be the low-hanging fruit of waste reduction, and I wanted additional ideas.  My family of five normally produces about 1½ kitchen bags of garbage per week.  Less than many.  More than most, especially if one considers the world beyond the U.S.’s borders.  But I wondered if there were other simple steps I could take.  Turns out there are, and I’ve incorporated a few additional practices in the past few months without any effort at all.

Here’s what we’d already been doing:

1)      Using reusable grocery bags, lunch boxes and lunch food containers.

2)      Double siding nearly all of our printing paper, including sheets my kids bring home from school.

3)      Recycling anything we can, even those things that our city doesn’t pick up: things like electronics, ink cartridges, batteries, old smoke alarms, fluorescent light bulbs, etc.  (note: recycling is not the panacea some people think it is.  More on that later.)

4)      Choosing cloth napkins rather than paper napkins (most of the time).

5)      Avoiding using paper plates, plastic utensils and plastic cups.  There are exceptions, but we now use these products maybe a few times a year.

6)      Composting all of our food-based scraps and using the compost in our garden each year (this is neither difficult, smelly nor messy.  Couldn’t be easier and the benefits are huge).

As a result of these efforts, we’ve virtually eliminated plastic baggies from our lives, have limited the number of plastic grocery bags we accumulate, created garbage that’s much less messy and limited our new paper consumption to approximately two reams a year.

Not perfect, but a start.

I looked for addition ideas in Korst’s book.  Some I found useful, some not so much, but that’s cool.  The idea is do what you can and then do a little more.  The most important accomplishment of her book is to get readers to start thinking about garbage differently.  As a result, in addition to using some of her suggestions directly, I came up with a few of my own, and continue to ask the question: is this disposable item necessary, or can there be another way?

Here’s what we’ve incorporated into our lifestyle since reading Korst’s book:

1)      We’ve started using reusable produce bags.  I was concerned that these mesh bags might pose a problem for cashiers, but that hasn’t been the case at all.  In fact, most of the time I get compliments for using them, and now we can even purchase the bags at our local grocery store, so they’re becoming less of a novelty.

2)      I no longer use Swiffer sheets for my hardwood floors.  Instead, I use cut-to-size scrap pieces of fleece we had laying around.  When they get overly dusty, I grab off the clumps and throw the fleece in the wash.  Wa la (this was my own idea, and it works beautifully).

3)      I no longer throw out scraps of wood, but rather use them as kindling for our camping and backyard fires.

4)      When I have a choice between purchasing something in a plastic bottle vs. something in aluminum or glass, I choose the latter.  Recycling is a messy business, and it’s important to note that not all recycling is created equal.  Aluminum and steel recycle very efficiently compared to, say, paper and plastic.  Best to avoid plastic whenever possible for a variety of reasons.

5)      I don’t use paper towels very often, but when I do they come from post-consumer material.  That goes for bathroom tissue, too.  Is it as soft?  Heck no!  But it’s really not a big deal.

6)      I no longer buy plastic bags for pet waste.

About that last point, allow me to elaborate about plastic bags.  I’ve heard some people say, “Why should I use canvas bags at grocery stores when I reuse the plastic bags for my dog’s or cat’s waste?  And besides, those reusable grocery store bags don’t last very long and I end up having to throw them out.”  Good questions, for sure.  Here’s what my recent experience has been. 

First, I’ve been using some grocery store bags for over fifteen years, but they’re not the cheap synthetic bags you’ll find at Target and other stores.  They’re made of thicker cotton – almost like denim – and these last forever.  Here’s an example.

As for pet waste, what I’ve found is that I have more sources for carrying waste than I realized.  Consider the following:

1)      The liners of cereal boxes.  It never occurred to me to use these prior to reading Korst’s book, but now I use each and every one of them.  In the morning when we finish up a box of cereal, I take the liner out and clean the cats’ little boxes.  Yes, it’s still producing waste, but it’s using what I already have.  It’s a small step.

2)      The bags that paper towels and toilet paper come in.  These work great for litter, and would probably even work for dog waste in the back yard.

3)      Newspaper bags.  You might be saying, “If you really care about eliminating waste, why get a paper in the first place?”  Good point.  This will be one of my goals in the upcoming weeks.  I only get the Sunday paper, but it’s a huge waste.  However, I also get a neighborhood paper delivered automatically, and I reuse the bag it comes in for pet waste.

There is so much more I can do, and little by little, I’m reducing my family’s garbage addiction.  Some of Korst’s suggestions seem almost batty, like taking a glass straw when you go out to restaurants or convincing women to stop using tampons or pads.  Not all of her suggestions are for everyone.  But there’s no question that all of us can do better.

Why not take some modest steps and see where it takes you?

A smartphone cost-savings alternative

I’m all for spending money where it matters.  For some people, that might be cars or vacations.  For others, fine dining and bottles of wine.  For me, I don’t mind spending money on live musical acts or my yearly pilgrimage to Lambeau  Field.  But I hate spending money on stuff that I don’t particularly value in the first place.  I’ve managed to avoid paying for cable for the past fourteen years, so that’s something, but I still piss away about $90 on a landline and Internet service each month, which irritates the hell out of me. 

Three years ago I purchased my first cell-phone – a dumb phone – and paid a monthly fee of $15 for its use.  Not too bad, but after three years it finally started going on the fritz, so I recently took the plunge into the smart phone waters, hopeful that I could do so without signing away my firstborn to one of the big providers.  A couple of years ago, this might have been an impossible task, but today there are a number of no-contract cell phone plans that are nice alternatives for certain consumers. 

I chose to go with Republic Wireless, a company that customizes the one phone it offers – the fabulous Moto X – so that it utilizes WiFi as the default, switching to a traditional cell network only when necessary.   This means that when you’re at home or in the office, you can use the WiFi available to you, which ultimately allows Republic Wireless to offer packages that are far cheaper than what you’ll find at Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.  I looked at the big providers, and generally the cost was $40 a month for the phone, plus another $50 or so for a data plan.  There are economies of scale, however, so adding another phone or two to the data plan improves the per-phone cost.   Also, the phones are free (or close to free), but that’s only as an enticement to lock you into a long-term plan.

Compare this with Republic Wireless.  Yes, there’s an upfront cost: I paid $299 for my Moto X, which seems like a lot compared to the free phone I could have gotten from one of the big providers, but it’s an excellent price for an excellent 16 GB phone, and now – here’s the best part – I only pay $10 a month to use it.  This includes data, text and phone when I’m in a WiFi network (including internationally), but only text and phone when traveling - no data.  For me this is not a big deal, as I spend most of my time at home.  But if I DO want data everywhere, Republic Wireless offers this for just $25 a month by piggybacking off of Sprint’s network.  And what's really fantastic is I’m allowed to switch plans twice a month, so if, for example, I decide I need data while traveling on vacation, I can bump my plan up to include data for a week or two, and then switch back to my normal $10 a-month plan.  Pretty cool.

Comparing costs long-term, I’ll start saving money with Republic Wireless after only four months.

Month:                 Total cost with normal plan          Total cost with Republic Wireless

1                            90                                                       310

2                            180                                                     320

3                            270                                                     330

4                            360                                                     340

Even if I decide to up my plan to include cell data service, I’ll start saving money after only five months.

1                            90                                                       325

2                            180                                                     350

3                            270                                                     375

4                            360                                                     400

5                            450                                                     425

Over three years, I’ll save between $2000 and $2600 depending on which plan I use at Republic Wireless.  Not too shabby.

If I add a second phone, the savings become slightly less per phone, since on a traditional plan you can combine data between phones.  With two phones on a traditional plan, I’d be paying $40 per phone plus another $60 for a monthly data plan – so $140 per month.  That’s compared to $20 to $50 a month with Republic Wireless (plus an initial investment of $600 to purchase the phones).  Over three years, that’s still a savings of between $2600 and $3700 total.  Again, not chump change.

Republic Wireless clearly isn’t for everyone (anyone who wants a phone other than Moto X, for instance), but it's an excellent alternative to the way things are usually done.  I suspect that in the next year or two, more and more plans will be made available to consumers that slash the cost of phone use, allowing us to spend more money on cars, fine dining or Packer tickets.

Now the question is: do I get rid of my landline?  

Supertramp, 1979

1979.  The year of The Knack, Led Zeppelin’s first album in over three years, 52^nd Street, Tusk, The Long Run, and…

Breakfast in America. 

Living in Milwaukee in 1979, there was nobody bigger than Supertramp.  Already mainstays of Milwaukee radio from their previous three releases, Supertramp was kept in constant rotation on WQFM and WLPX, with “Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stanger,” “Breakfast in America,” “Take the Long Way Home” and “Lord Is It Mine” all making the airwaves.  Supertramp played at Mecca Arena on March 22, and then returned to Alpine Valley for three consecutive shows on June 15-June 17, just a week after exiting the Billboard best-selling album ranking (only to return a week later).

The tour culminated six months later in Paris, after selling over four million copies of Breakfast in America in the US alone, the fifth-best selling album that year, eventually winning the Grammy for the best engineered recording.  The Paris show was recorded and subsequently released as a live LP, and though the concert was also filmed, it wasn’t made available in video.  This glaring omission in rock concert libraries has now been rectified, as the show is now available on DVD and Blue Ray.

I missed the 1979 tour.  As an 11 year-old, too young to see rock concerts, I was filled with jealousy when my brother returned home from one of the Alpine Valley shows with a t-shirt in hand.  I made the next Supertramp concert at Alpine Valley on August 28, 1983, for what would be Roger Rodgson’s last tour with the band, and I have terrific memories of Bob Siebenberg starting the show with the kick drum from “Don’t Leave Me Now” as a giant tightrope walker appeared on the film screen behind the stage and the band launched into the song “Crazy.”

Watching the Breakfast in America DVD last night brought back fond memories of that show, but I was also able to watch the band with perhaps a more discerning eye than back in 1983.  A few thoughts:

• Davies and Hodgson have no stage presence whatsoever.  Hodgson sings most of his songs with his eyes closed, and Davies has a twitch that makes him look like he’s expending the greatest of effort even when he’s playing the simplest of keyboard parts.  I remember both of the band leaders having little to no interaction with the audience in 1983 as well, with the exception of Hodgson announcing his decision to leave the band (just before playing "Give a Little Bit").
• John Helliwell, in addition to being a great woodwind and keyboard contributor, is the voice of the band, adding a much needed sense of humor and dialogue with the audience.
• Hodgson is a very underrated guitarist.  I liken him to David Gilmore; perhaps his chops aren’t extraordinary, but his choice of notes and sounds are flawless.  Just hearing him play the tasteful guitar solo in “School” was enough for me to take notice, and I still love his work at the end of “Goodbye Stranger.”
• The stage setup is interesting, so that even though Davies only plays keyboards (and harmonica), he positions himself in one of four different places on the stage: one for the front stage Wurlizer, one for the grand piano, one for the Hammond and other keyboards stage left, and another keyboard setup that allows for Hodgson and Helliwell to have easy access during songs that require guitar and woodwinds.  In effect, you have three of the five members moving around regularly, which makes for a more fulfilling visual experience.
• The highlight of the concert for me is the inclusion of “Another Man’s Woman,” a Davies tour de force and completely unexpected.  Hodgson’s understated guitar work during this song is another example of how less is more.
• Perplexingly absent from the set list are Davies’s contribution to Supertramp's latest release.  Only one of his songs from Breakfast in America is performed, the hit “Goodbye Stranger.”  In the notes from my concert program for the …Famous Last Words… tour, is states, “Rick Davies was so sure that Breakfast in America would not reach the top 5 on the American charts that he bet Bob Siebenberg $100 that it wouldn’t.”  Perhaps he didn’t really like the tunes from this record, which would explain why he played all four of his songs from Crime of the Century, but only one from the best-selling album in the band’s history.
• The screen behind the stage is used fleetingly, and I suspect this was a rather extravagant and expensive proposition in 1979.  On the DVD, film is used only for the songs “Rudy,” “Fool’s Overture” and “Crime of the Century.”  When I saw them in 1983, I recall them using the screen for "Crazy" and “Child of Vision” as well.
• Why the cameras didn’t roll during “Ain’t Nobody But Me,” “From Now On,” “A Soapbox Opera,” “You Started Laughing” and “Downstream” is a mystery, and one wonders if Rick’s contributions to the band were overlooked in favor of the hit-making Hodgson, since four of the five missing tracks are Davies songs.  Luckily, the audio is included for these tracks as a DVD extra.

The legacy of Supertramp has been minimized in my mind due to Hodgson’s departure in 1983, a few uninteresting albums since that time, a lot of extended time off, and the inability of Davies and Hodgson to come to a settlement that would culminate in a reunion tour.  Other bands have stayed relevant without new material (The Beatles, anyone?  Or Billy Joel?), but one has to wonder if Supertramp is one of those bands that’s going to disappear entirely from people’s playlists in the next ten or twenty years.  If so, it’ll be a shame, because Supertramp had a remarkable knack for walking the balance beam between creativity and accessibility.  There is no reason in the world that a song like “School” should have gotten radio play, and yet it did.  Supertramp achieved something remarkable, and I have to wonder if after the inclusion of Heart into the Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame last year, if they shouldn’t be considered.  I doubt it'll happen, but if the year 1979 is any indication of the band’s impact on the music world, perhaps it should.

The Sorry State of Broadway

Waiting among thousands for the Broadway in Chicago Summer Concert at Millennium Park last week, I scanned the ten shows that were to be reviewed that evening and couldn’t believe how utterly lame Broadway has become.  Of the ten shows, there wasn’t one fully original production.  Not one.  Instead, we were treated to the equivalent of a classic rock band, feeding on the familiar, with not one surprise in the lot.

Here’s the breakdown:

Continuing the trend that was perfected in the 90s, five of the musicals are based on movies: Once, Ghost, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Elf and Flashdance.

Three shows are showcases of already-familiar music: We Will Rock You, Motown and Million Dollar Quartet.

Two of the shows are productions of shows that are at least ten years old: Wicked and Evita.

There you have it. 

This is hardly a new phenomenon on Broadway.  For over twenty years now, the high cost of musical flops have spurred producers to rely on a built-in audience, spawning shows such as the Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Big, The Producers, Spamalot, Billy Elliot, The Adam’s Family, etc.  This year, all four nominees for best musical were based on movies: winner Kinky Boots, Matilda, A Christmas Story and Bring it On.  But hey, at least these musicals had some original music.  More and more, there are the jukebox musicals, showcasing music the audience is already familiar with.  Building off the success of Mama Mia and Jersey Boys, musical lovers have been bombarded with these types of productions in recent years: Movin’ Out, All Shook Up, Ring of Fire, Rock of Ages, etc.

As for Evita and Wicked, both are both original shows that were phenomenally successful.  Kudos to Stephen Schwartz and the writing due of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.  Can you write something new now?

I wondered if perhaps the city of Chicago didn’t compare to the originality showcased in New York, but shows currently running (or soon to be running) in the Big Apple are the following:

Annie, Big Fish, The Bridges of Madison County, Bullets over Broadway, Cinderella, Chicago, Jersey Boys, Kinky Boots, Les Miserables, The Lion King, Mama Mia, Matilda, Motown, Newsies, Once, The Phantom of the Opera, Rock of Ages, Rocky (seriously) and Wicked.

Shows like this year’s best musical winner, Kinky Boots, and Big Fish, should perhaps get a free pass, because they’re not based on a blockbuster movie, and therefore are produced not with a built-in audience in mind, but with the thought that the musical will be more successful than the film.  In a sense, this is no different than if the musical had been based on a book.  I saw Big Fish last spring in Chicago, and am hopeful that it generates an interest in Manhattan (see my review).   But the likes of 2011 winner The Book of Mormon and 2008 winner In the Heights are all too rare.  

When will Broadway begin to wag the dog of Hollywood instead of dutifully following its master?

McCartney Sweats it out in Milwaukee

It’s a little bizarre that a man only four years younger than my father is able to transfix an audience in sweltering heat for just short of three hours.  On Tuesday night at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Paul McCartney, forty-nine years after taking the U.S. by storm with The Beatles, played his heart out, shirt soaked with sweat, and gave a performance that fans are sure to remember for another forty-nine years.  Just as with Springsteen’s recent concerts, last night’s show begged the question: why don’t all performers work as hard and show as much appreciation as this guy does?  If a seventy-one year old McCartney can do it, why not (fill in the blank of some of the lame performances you’ve seen lately)?

After seeing McCartney in 2005, I decided that I wasn’t going to attend any more of his shows.  I’d noticed he’d aged in the two years since I’d seen him last, and I didn’t want to see this iconic singer/songwriter continue to degrade before my eyes.  But allowing my son to see him this time around changed my mind, and eight years later, McCartney almost seems to have become younger, withstanding the blistering heat and deftly managing a set list that didn’t once take him out of the spotlight.

Of particular note last night was the setlist, offering surprises that left many of the die-hard fans elated.  For me, the inclusion of “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” was worth the price of admission alone, but he surprised with other songs: “Junior’s Farm,” “Hi, Hi, Hi,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and several songs never performed live before this tour, including “Lovely Rita,” “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” “Another Day,” and “Your Mother Should Know.”  One of the most effective songs of the evening was another unexpected song, “Mrs. Vanderbilt” from his largely represented Band on the Run album, as even the unfamiliar in the crowd willingly shouted out the “Ho, Hey Ho” refrain. 

McCartney’s skipping of thirty years of repertoire between Tug of War’s “Here Today” and last year’s “My Valentine” is about the only criticism I could possibly make of the show.  It would have been cool if Paul had at least made a gentle nod to his compositions of the 80s and 90s, substituting a couple of the lesser interesting Beatles tunes for “Stranglehold,” “My Brave Face,” “Off the Ground” or “The World Tonight.”  But this is quibbling.  Backed my his proficient band of the last decade, the performances were uniformly fantastic, almost to a fault at times as keyboardist Paul Wickens recreated nearly note for note the brass and saxophone parts from McCartney’s repertoire, though his strings were a nice addition on songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Yesterday.”  Band members Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray and the particularly entertaining drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., supported McCartney throughout, and their impeccable backing vocals helped to mask McCartney’s weakening upper register.  Paul’s falsetto, however, required no masking, as showcased on songs like “Something” and “Maybe I’m Amazed.”  That he still has such brilliant falsetto at seventy-one is amazing to me, and it’s a skill that, if lost, would perhaps cause him to call it a day on live performing.

Ending the show with “Helter Skelter” and the last of the Abbey Road medley, McCartney completed a sampling of what is likely the most impressive repertoire of a live performer today.  There were audience members in attendance who had seen McCartney play in Milwaukee in 1964 with The Beatles.  I doubt they saw as good a show then as they did last night.