Packing Them In

Packaging waste-including plastics waste-the scourge of Western civilization, has found itself an unlikely vocal champion.

New York-based packaging designer Randy Ludacer has a long-standing sideline as a musician. Now his day job has inspired his art – as he takes to the stage to sing hymns to discarded burger boxes, corrugated cardboard and microwave pouches.

Ludacer has bagged the gig of all gigs: he will play Freshkills Park, in a free concert called ‘Songs about Packaging’. It’s not quite up there with the Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’ tour, but Ludacer has irony on his side: until recently, the park was “the world’s largest landfill” – so he will be “serenading, in effect, the decades of discarded packaging buried beneath”.

While packaging forms only a fraction of the detritus within a landfill, it is the most visible form of ‘waste’. With his two-hour concert, Ludacer – who proudly earns his living designing consumer packaging – is effectively wiping the slate clean by commemorating the transformation of an environmental disaster into a well-manicured park.

All those who attend his gig – on 26 September, so there’s still time – will receive a free CD of seven songs from the concert. (The CD sleeves are handmade, by Ludacer, from recycled packaging.) The stand-out track – for its title alone – is ‘This Landfill is Your Landfill’.

Forty years on, it’s like Woodstock never happened.

See www.nycgovparks.org/parks/freshkillspark/events/173712 for more information on the concert, and book a place

For previews of some of the songs, see www.ludacer.com/next.html