Today, I am blogging to request your support in for the nomination of the Green Party. I promise that when I am president, I will make sure that the Green Party will have:
- live music
- good food
- good booze
- good friends
- perhaps some shenanigans later in the evening after the good booze has taken effect, and maybe even have the cops come and tell us to simmer down
Yes. I’m talking about throwing a party. A green party. A real green party!
What’s that you say? You thought that “green party” meant a political organization? Haha, yeah right. Me? Politics?
What I am talking about throwing a party that has all the fun of a regular party, but less of an impact on the environment.
A few weeks ago was my 40th birthday. Yeah, I’m getting old, just like you. My wife, who is a little bit older than me wanted to throw a big ole bash to celebrate me “catching up” to her. We had all the elements listed above, including a live rock band. But, this time, we decided we would try to make it more green than our previous parties.
The Drinks — Ditch the Plastic Water Bottle
Americans drink about 28 billion water bottles a year, and 80 percent of them end up in landfills. The bottles themselves are PET plastic. They are recyclable, but most people do not bother — especially at a party. Though this only accounts for one third of one percent of the total volume of garbage at a landfill, it is not necessary.
The bottles also require about 17 million barrels of oil to produce, and the production produces between 2 and 3 million tonnes of CO2, plus energy costs and the carbon it produces.
Once the bottle is made and filled with water, it is shipped around the country, wasting even more energy and carbon in the transportation because water is relatively heavy. Orange juice manufacturers ship dehydrated frozen juice around to save money for this very reason, and you have to reconstitute it at home. Yet, we still ship the water all over.
Even worse, everyone assumes that bottled water tastes better, has less pollutants than tap water, and is just plain better for you. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, this is often not the case. They have found that many bottled waters contain various toxins just like tap water.
When you think about it, why are they bottling water in Fiji and spending all that energy to ship it half way across the globe to us? What? We don’t have clean drinking water here at home?
So what we did is get a ceramic urn. A big one (3.5 gallons), with a dispenser spout at the bottom. We filtered regular tap water with our Brita filter and put it in. Then, in went a whole, sliced lemon for flavour and a bunch of ice to keep it cold. Then, we put out a stack of cups beside a few markers. A note next to the markers asked people to write their names on their cups and reuse them all night for all their drinks, from the sangria to the water.
And people did!
We went though about 100 cups for about 80 guests (84 with the band members!). The guests drank a total of about 9 gallons of water, 2 gallons of sangria, and 1 gallon of lemon drops, and 4 cases of wine. (They also drank beer, but not from cups.) Altogether that is about 230 drinks in cups, which means people used their cups just over 2 times each. In terms of the water alone, the 9 gallons represents about 70 bottles of water that were not used for the party.
In terms of the beers and sodas, we used glass bottles and aluminum cans. What we could have done to reduce the impact further is rent two small kegs for the beer, which are of course reusable. That also that the advantage the beer tastes better because it is on draught, and we could have gotten some microbrews instead of the national brands we bought. Oh well, there will be another party some time!
The Food — Hmm, Hmm, Good!
We ordered the food in from a local BBQ restaurant that does catering. They don’t have any organic options, but we did choose the pulled pork and BBQ chicken, which produces less carbon when you raise them than beef. We also had some sliced beef brisket because certain BBQ aficionados amongst my friends would have complained that it wasn’t “real” Texas BBQ without it, but we were heavier on the chicken and pork than the beef. We topped it off with corn bread, regular wheat buns for the pulled pork, baked jalapeno beans, a green salad, potato salad, and some cheeses and fruits. Most of the food was produced right here in the US and didn’t have to travel that far to get to our table.
Still, we could have done better if we had made the food ourselves. We wanted to enjoy the party though instead of spending all night finishing food. It is difficult to find restaurants that publish info about the environmental impact of the food they serve, but it is heartening to note that restaurants are starting to realize that they can and should go green too. This blog article talks about green restaurants.
We did make the appetizers ourselves. We had a caprese salad on a toothpick. A piece of tomato from our garden, a leaf of basil, also from our garden, and a slice of fresh mozzarella. The mozzarella was not from our garden, seeing as we don’t have any room to raise a cow. Maybe when we get old and have a big ole farm, we may get a cow. But for now, the backyard is the exclusive domain of our cats and a few random squirrels.
Plates and Utensils — Eat Green
There are disposable plates, and there are recyclable plates, and then there are compostable plates.
Disposable plates can be made of plastic or plastic foam. That’s not so green. It goes right into the landfill and takes about 500 years to degrade. Even then, once it is degraded, it does not necessarily return the ecosystem.
You might think that paper plates are green. After all, they are made of paper, a natural wood product. However, there are paper plates, and there are paper plates with coating to prevent the dreaded soggy plate syndrome. Unfortunately, most plates are the latter. The coating is often a thin layer of plastic, which is of course not very biodegradable. Sometimes it is wax, which is better because at least it is a natural substance.
In terms of compostable plates, there are various different materials on the market such as the traditional wood, fibres from sugar cane waste (known as bagasse), and bamboo fibres, as well as many other fibres.
What we got is the unglazed or uncoated paper plates. They are just plain wood paper pressed into a pretty rigid shape. With a little shredding, they should be quite compostable, food specs and all.
One interesting development is the availability of plastic plates and implements made of potato starch or corn starch plastic. This is called Plastic Starch Material. These sort of materials can be used just like regular petroleum-based plastics, but they are compostable in 180 days like regular biodegradable materials under ideal composting conditions.
Mater-Bi (main component corn-starch), and PolyActide (PLA) (made from corn-starch as well) are currently the 2 main resins (raw materials), being used today in the production of compostable & biodegradable plastics and are certified for compostability under standards set by international organizations. However, other resins are coming into the market made from potato starch, soybean protein, cellulose etc. Most of these are currently not certified for compostability, though some are for biodegradability.
One idea we didn’t do but thought about for future parties is finger foods. Serve only things that are not messy and can be eaten without utensils. Chips and salsa. Crudites. Veggies and dip. For one thing, this type of food is more convenient for parties, and for another, they don’t produce any utensil wastes. Plus, they are fun, light, and small — perfect party food!
Recycling — Make it Easy
At most parties I’ve been to, there are a few garbage cans strategically placed where you can chuck all your wastes. At ours, there was a huge, very clearly marked bin for glass/aluminum, and another for paper plates and napkins, and a third for all other garbage. I’m happy to say that most people stuck to the plan, and deposited the right things in the right bins. Various people told me that the huge signs made it easy and they wouldn’t otherwise have taken the time in a party to separate out the recyclables.
Heating — What you Need for California Summer Nights
Here in California, it is nice and warm during the day. But we have a dry heat, and when the sun goes down, so does the temperature. The cold air off the ocean creeps in, and soon everyone wants to move the party inside.
Except of course, we don’t have room for 80 people inside. We wanted to keep people out in the back yard as long as possible. So, we decided to provide heating.
What we did is set up a firepit with local, seasoned firewood from a friend’s ranch. Not only did this have a nice smell and an ambiance like a campfire, it does not release “extra” carbon into the atmosphere. What I mean is that the carbon that is released by burning the wood was originally captured by the trees in the first place when they grew. We are not increasing the carbon in the atmosphere with fossil fuels by burning wood.
However, fires are not the most green way to heat. There is the matter of particulate pollution and oxides of nitrogen and such. Anything that burns hot also oxidizes the nitrogen in the air as it is burning, producing nitrous oxides that form the basis for smogs and help produce acid rain. Also, the smoke itself is an aerosol that can stay afloat in the atmosphere for months before settling, effectively becoming part of the air pollution.
However, you have to pick the least of two evils. Burning wood occurs naturally via forest fires, and the eco-systems have mechanisms to deal with it. But there is no mechanism to deal with huge increases in CO2 in the atmosphere. So, for us during this party, wood was the way to go.
Lighting — The Ambiance is Green
If people are going to stay outside, they have to be able to see each other.
What we did is two things. We have all white LED Christmas lights and also white LED rope lighting. If you have read previous blog entries, you would remember that LED lighting uses about 1/10 the energy for the same light output as regular incandescent bulbs do. LEDs in this situation also have the advantage that they are pretty soft lighting and look nice too. I remember sitting in European outdoor cafes with the lights strung overhead on our trips over there, and that is exactly the sort of feeling these lights gave.
Other things we could have done, but didn’t do: tiki torches. The oil can come from renewable sources (a biofuel!) and if you get the citronella oil, it also helps keep the bugs away.
Overall, a good time was had by everyone and many people didn’t realize it was a somewhat more green party than usual. They just remember the ambiance, the good music, food, and drink, and of course the good company. And hopefully I can forget the fact that I turned 40. Hah!
