Turning Your Dinner Party Green!

With the Holiday season just right around the corner, your busy schedules probably just got slammed with a number of dinner parties to attend. Attending dinner parties are fun but hosting dinner parties can be fun too! Whether you are having a small get together or many people over for a green celebration, planning does not have to be stressful and hopefully this article will ease your list of things to do.

So you’ve decided you’re going to have a dinner party. Next step is figuring out how you’re going to send your invitations. To go green and ease the carbon footprint on getting your attendees attention to save the date, may we suggest using social media? What a quick and easy way to contact your network of friends. Remember, just because its online doesn’t mean you can’t get creative. Send your invites a jazzed up email, they will be excited to open it making them even more excited to attend, we like to use Evite.com.

Another idea is to suggest a prize for those who arrive by alternative forms of transportation other than by car, but whatever the prize is, make it green and make it goodJ. When you decorate for your party create displays of fresh flowers and soy candles and get creative with the seasons offerings. Pinecones, lemons, leaves, and oranges are all things found in or around your house that can add to the fall season and add to the mood of a comfortable environment.

Don’t forget to invest in some ‘green wine’; no, the color of the wine is not green but you can compliment any dish by supporting an ecologically sensitive winery.  Or, you can have green drinks by supporting a local micro brewery, as more and more breweries are using organic ingredients. When shopping for your dinner party, don’t forget about the after dinner coffee which you can go green by supporting fair trade. If there are leftovers, send everyone home with whatever is left, or compost your scraps for your garden. When you’re cleaning up, make sure to skip the prewash, however if you don’t have a dishwasher, use some eco friendly soap to hand wash your dishes like Seven Generations or Shaklee. You should always seek out green household cleaning products because they are good for your health and good for the environment too.

As you can see these are quick and easy steps to use when you’re plan for your green celebration. We aren’t asking you to make drastic changes in the way you plan but as you can see by changing a little, you can and will reduce your holiday dinner party carbon footprint. All of these things are easy on your wallet; health and the environment too. Have fun and stay green this holiday season!

Ever Wonder How Eco Friendly your Wine Is?

The problem is not the wine itself, but the packaging that it comes in.

Have you thought about your wine carbon footprint? This embodies the energy it takes to make containers by the level of greenhouse emissions produced by not only transporting the wine, but also the amount of solid waste it leaves in the landfill. Which, for your information, heavy glass bottles do not do so well! Because of this, more and more wineries are coming out with more eco friendly packaging for your wine.

Sure, boxed wine keeps wine fresh, holding about 4 bottles in an easily transferable package which is great for camping and activities of the sort but the quality of choices available are still very limited. This becomes a problem because people like their wine, and some are not willing to surrender their favorite wines for the package it comes in.

Plastic bottles are fabulous for their size and weight but their use by date makes the wine go bad before you even get a chance to drink it. The tetra pack drinking cartons are extremely portable and the ratio of packaging to wine is 4% packaging to 96% wine, but because of this great ratio, there are a few thin layers of different materials make recycling difficult and not all recycling companies accept them.

We are becoming more conscious drinkers, which is great! Although there are still strides to be made for wine packaging to become more eco friendly we seem to be on the way to figuring it all out. There is something you can look forward to! Some wineries are producing reusable stainless steel canisters and even wine on tap from barrels!

Become an Earth Friendly Drinker

You should not be too surprised when you hear about how people everywhere are going through extreme measures to become more conscious wine drinkers. Biodynamic farming is becoming more and more respected and known. Basically, the farm is respected as a self contained organism with unique qualities, for example, livestock rather than chemical fertilizer is used to enhance soil fertilization.

Also, there are particular agriculture homeopathy preparations that are used to wake up the plants; they work to stimulate their natural abilities in order to meet environmental challenges. Biodynamic farms are based on the farmer’s knowledge around respecting the natural rhythm to irrigate, prune, harvest on the most effective days. Although organic wine is here, it may not taste the same as the conventional wines you may be used to, but over time you should be able to appreciate the subtle qualities and you may even find that it is hard to consume conventional wines after becoming used to biodynamic wines.

Next time you are wine shopping, look for wines produced from biodynamical organic grown grapes because now you know that this is a clear indication that the wine will not contain any pesticide residues and is in fact produced wholesome. You can look forward to reading more about how to select eco friendly packaged wines another time but for the time being, stay away from heavy bottles!