DTE spearheading big recycling effort at Detroit Jazz Festival - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

DETROIT (MyFox Detroit) -- You can feel the groove around Campus Martius and you can also see the green.  For the fourth straight year, the DTE Energy Foundation is greening the Detroit Jazz Festival.

You can't miss the cardboard recycling bins.  There are 50 of them all over the area.

"We have LED screens this year.  We're really proud of that, again protecting the environment, and the recycling and green message will be posted throughout the jazz festival to remind our visitors, as well as the vendors, to recycle," explained Carla Hall, vice president of the DTE Energy Foundation.

She said it is all part of an ongoing commitment to reduce, reuse and save energy.  Fans can recycle paper, plastic, cardboard and cans.  There's even a place to pour out liquids and throw away cigarette butts, the most commonly discarded piece of waste on the planet.  It's estimated that 1.6 billion pounds of butts wind up as toxic trash each year creating a huge environmental hazard.

As many as a million people could attend the four day jazz fest with five stages and 100 acts.  The first year DTE started its greening project, two tons of waste were recycled.  They tripled that number to six tons last year, and thanks to a small army of volunteers, they expect to recycle even more at this year's event, keeping all of those reusable materials out of the landfills.

"It's just extremely important to protect the environment, to lessen the carbon footprint on the environment, and personally being a Detroiter, I think it's just very important to keep Detroit clean," Hall said.

If you want to check out the jazz fest, it continues through Monday.  You can even catch a late night jam session at the Renaissance Center Marriott until 1:00 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.