Despite having played an instrument since the age of six – first piano, then guitar, until finally discovering my passion in vocal music – I never considered it any more than a hobby. I recognized that perhaps it meant something when, after a tiresome day or stressful week, all I wanted was to get near a piano and a solitary place to sing. Regardless, I never thought it possible to interconnect my passion for music with my more academic studies: political science and environmental studies. Last fall, however, I was fortunate enough to discover something called “ecomusicology”. Simply put, Ecomusicology examines how music both reflects and affects our relationship with nature in political, individual, and spiritual spheres. It expands into areas of non-human animals, and even plants, and their relationships with or reliance upon sound. What enthuses me, though, is the intersection between music and politics, particularly environmental politics and environmental justice.

The first weekend of October, I traveled to Asheville, North Carolina to attend a conference titled “Ecomusics & Ecomusicologies: Dialogues”. Topics discussed ranged from indigenous groups’ use of sound for healing, music in response to mountaintop coal removal in Appalachia (of which there is a LOT, and which I will touch on in a bit), and affects of sound on self-awareness and being – among many others. The creative arts are a necessary tool to bring out our true “humanness,” as one presenter put it. As an environmentalist, I have to wonder why music and the arts are left out of our usual discussion of sustainability. How can we sustain the human population if we disregard the histories that progressed us to where we are today? The arts as a whole are representative of cultures, values, beliefs, and concerns of any given time throughout our human history. Thus, in the quest to answer “What is it we wish to sustain?” I feel we should also be thinking about what we are proud of as a species. Perhaps I am biased, but I would think the arts are something almost all of us can say we are thankful for.

As environmental activist Tim DeChristopher said, “We will be a movement when we sing like a movement”. I love this quote for the fact that it emphasizes the simple power of song in forming a sense of community, one that is going to be essential for our species to thrive in the near and distant future. Music is not just a thing produced, but an action we engage with, sometimes called “musicking”. The act of musicking is social and political in that it establishes a set of relationships between all involved. This perception of music is essential to the understanding of music as protest. When I traveled up to New York City in September for the People’s Climate March, I was fortunate to happen upon a small group of people (amidst the 400,000 there) singing “If I Had A Hammer” as they marched. As a child, “If I Had A Hammer” was a song I listened to during car rides down from Ohio to South Carolina, a song on a Peter, Paul, and Mary album that my father insisted on overplaying. Now I understand that particular song’s significance in countless social movements across America. This enhanced depth of understanding is of not only songs but also social activism in general, and I am thrilled to apply it in my own life, political engagement, and my overall understandings of sustainability and the human species.

-Abby Tennenbaum

After moving to Charleston without a place to live and suffering a series of frantic and disappointing Craigslist encounters, I found myself a room to sublease.  I met with the current resident of the room the same day I contacted her, checked out the second story home once, and moved in a few hours later.  It seemed like I was getting a great deal – the home sat right near Colonial Lake and I was paying under $600 per month, utilities included.  I shared the house with three girls, all of whom seemed to be agreeable human beings from my limited impression of them.  It took me a few days to realize how unsavory my situation actually was.

The faucet dripped.  Constantly.  The only way to make it stop was to push down, hard, in just the right place and in just the right way.  I was the only one who would make the effort to get it to stop or put a mason jar underneath to catch the water, but I would come home to find that the tap was leaking so much that it might as well have been on and the mason jar – overfull with water – had been defiled with soap and dish scum.  Then their water bill came in and usage was astronomically high, something like three times what one household would normally use in a month.  I was astonished that my housemates had done nothing to fix the problem up until this point, nor even considered it a problem, and clearly there were no intentions to act in the immediate future.  It was infuriating that around the world people kill and die for access to drinking water but my privileged housemates were wasting it without a second thought.

So what did I do? I did some research, rode my bike to the nearest bathroom supply outlet, bought some replacement parts, and fixed the faucet.  It took me maybe an hour.

While this is indeed a great outlet for complaining about my living situation, I do have a point.  Sustainability is not some highfalutin word for soaring idealisms and unfeasible praxis – it is about real people and solvable issues.  At its core it is about making your stomping grounds more efficient, and consequently more livable.

So let’s leave “sustainability” for the thinkers.  The common man has his equally noble role to play: to make his living space as livable as possible with what he’s got.  And it’s easy.  Keeping your kitchen clean, using diluted dish soap, taking shorter showers, using less toilet paper, flushing less often, fixing your screen door with a piece of used floss, that sort of thing.  Reducing then reusing and only then recycling.  It’s not about the environment; it will be fine with or without us.  It’s about you, it’s about me, and it’s about all the leaky faucets on this rock we call Earth.  Anything less is a fundamental lack of respect.

-Corey Klawunder

As we enter this 4^th of July weekend our minds fill with wonderful thoughts of barbecues, flag waiving and most of all, the spectacle of fireworks. Being a firework enthusiast myself I was interested in learning more about these enchantments, but also weary of what I might find. 

In addition to the traditional recipe for things that go boom, today’s billion-dollar Pyrotechnic industry uses metals such as magnesium and copper to achieve different colors and light intensities. ^[1] Recently as firework shows have become more technical, some fireworks even contain computer chips to help timing.

As I read more about fireworks and their ingredients my worries were confirmed with reports of toxic byproducts of firework displays such as heavy metals, chlorates, and dioxins accumulating in the air, water, and land. These products are mostly the result of the oxidizer component of the firework breaking down. ^[2] Talk about a buzz-kill.

This dark side of fireworks at times may even pose a serious threat to air quality. During extreme instances the EPA takes notice ^[3]. This toxic side effect of fireworks and safety concerns has caused some cities to opt for expensive laser shows over the traditional firework displays. 

However, to the relief of firework lovers like myself, there is the possibility of green fireworks, and not just in color. Fireworks have been developed and used that utilize nitrogen rich compounds and other less toxic components. These new ecofriendly fireworks can also be smokeless. To put the cherry on top they are even said to be more vivid in color than standard fireworks.

As one can guess, there is probably a reason we don’t use them—price. These green fireworks are currently cost prohibitive for larger scale shows but have been used for smaller scale displays. Perhaps, in the future given the right consumer demand we can have large-scale shows using smokeless, more colorful, and non-toxic fireworks.     

-John Brooker

Sources

[1] “Chemistry of Firework Colors.” About.com Chemistry. Web. 01 July 2014.

[1]Wiley-Blackwell. “Environmentally Friendly Fireworks And Other Pyrotechnics.”   

      ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 March 2008.

      <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317102449.htm>.

[2]”Treatment of Data Influenced by Exceptional Events.” EPA. Environmental 

       Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 03 July 2014.

Last Monday morning at Bees Ferry Landfill in West Ashley, the Office crew got to learn a few things about landfills from Bronwyn Santos of Charleston County’s Environmental Management, who was kind enough to give us a tour of the 700-acre trash heap.

The first thing that took most of us off guard was how scenic the site appears as you enter—the rolling hills, now considered sanctuary grounds for wild birds, are actually heaping piles of waste that have since been covered over with dirt and grass. Piled in the back of a pickup truck, we rolled past these grassy mounds and soon arrived at the fresh fill. While the smell of methane was reasonable to expect, we couldn’t have anticipated the crazy number of gulls that flocked over our heads like a Hitchcock movie while Bronwyn explained the workings and composition of the landfill. Some of us picked our way through the rubble and mud to get closer to the worksite, where men in bulldozers were filling a gigantic valley with truckloads of trash. The scene was incredible—it was as if the earth had broken open and oozed out old mattresses and sneakers and broken chairs and plastic bottles, waste that formed cliffs where vultures and gulls could perch. 

From what Bronwyn told us, a few statistics were particularly striking. Apparently, 25% of the waste sent to Bees Ferry is recyclable paper. From the amount of plastic bottles we saw strewn around the dirt-trash mountain range, it’s clear that a much higher percentage of that waste is recyclable material in general. Another 28% of what they receive is food waste. They’re the only landfill in the region that will receive food waste, so a lot of it is sent here. It makes sense then that they have a compost operation, which we got to witness next. Taking place within the area that is technically reserved for piling waste, the compost procedure mixes this food waste (nitrogen) with yard waste (carbon) to create a good amount of dark nutritious dirt that they process and resell for $10 a ton (definitely a steal.) The dirt is also used to mix in with the landfills and to help “close” them up when they’ve reached capacity. We learned about the “recipe” for a trash fill, which includes a plastic catchment layer at the bottom that is meant to prevent toxins from the waste from seeping into the environment, and several deep wells that allow for groundwater testing and treatment. 

Even while addressing this regimented management, Bronwyn was in no way disingenuous about the unsustainable nature of the whole operation. According to her, the facility—which is only a decade or so old to begin with—is sure to reach its limit in only 20 years. This was pretty shocking to hear; even worse is that there’s no purported plan for what to do after that. No catchment layer can prevent this literal wasteland from toxifying the environment around it—not to mention the grievances of surrounding communities, from whom the facility receives regular complaints. So even while Bee’s Ferry is a special case in that it composts and has a mixed fill and is quite regulated, it’s still a temporary and even hazardous solution—yet landfills in general are our most standard method of dealing with waste. 

Visibly seeing the masses of trash we generate, and what becomes of it, should not be such an out of the ordinary experience. If it were up to me, school systems would mandate educational field trips to local landfills. Just as people should be more aware of where their food and materials come from, they should know where they go. Seeing and knowing about what comes of the waste we generate is a necessary first step before you can convince people to care about their role in the issue. The culture of mindless disposal is not sustainable—we’d like to cover the problem with grass and call it a bird sanctuary, but when the trucks roll over and cause the whole earth to shake, it’ll be clear that we are no longer standing on solid ground. 

–Genna DeGroot