Partying In (Green) Style

Once a green convert, always a green at heart! 

I know of someone who is a fervent practitioner of this religion. She lives in a community with 40 odd households. Looking at the waste that is generated due to disposables after a party, she convinced her community to buy common dishes for parties. 

They bought 50 full plates, quarter plates, bowls, and cutlery. The dishes are kept with the manager. 

Whoever hosts a party at home can borrow the dishes free of cost. The only caveat is that the dishes have to be cleaned before returning and if any item is broken or lost, it has to be replaced. Fair enough! If a party is held at the clubhouse, then a nominal amount is to be paid to housekeeping for cleaning up the dishes. 

What a wonderful idea! Since inception, the dishes have been borrowed at least ten times within a span of three months. Imagine the number of disposables saved due to this practice.

It reaffirms a couple of things. One, someone has to take an initiative to launch sustainable practices. Two, such initiatives don't go waste. Support is always round the corner. 

Hail the green spirit and its passionate practitioners!

My Favourite Green Quotes

“The earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but 

not a single man's greed."

- Mahatma Gandhi


"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one 

thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to 

ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” 

- Chief Seattle

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try to sleep with a mosquito in your room."

- Dalai Lama 


“Oh beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,

For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.

America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,

And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily 

sea.” 

- George Carlin


"Everyone wants to park their vehicles in shade but no one 

wants to plant trees."

-Anonymous

"Man is a strange being: he makes deserts bloom and lakes

 die." 

- Gil Stern

"The only thing that can't be recycled is time."

-Anonymous


"Men are from Mars and 

Women are from Venus

And that's where they'll have to go

If this earth they don't clean up."

-Anubhooti

Green Crafts - Upcycling A Paint Bin

After my apartment was painted, I was left with many empty paint bins. I wanted to convert one to a waste bin and a few others to potholders. We had recently started garbage segregation in our community, so a bin for reject waste was needed. I wanted to beautify the bin by twining a rope around it but never got around to hunting for the rope.

On a trip to Sikar, Rajasthan, I spotted this rope while going around in a local market. It is called 'moonj' and is used to weave 'charpais'. (cots woven with ropes). I am always attracted to rustic things and was delighted to find this. In fact, I wanted just a little bit but the shopkeeper would only sell the whole bundle. It was way too much for my requirement but there was no choice. When I reached home armed with a bundle of rope, everyone scoffed at my purchase and wondered what I was going to do with it. They ridiculed my idea of lugging the rope all the way to Bangalore:)

The rope, however, did get lugged to Bangalore. One fine day, my sis-in-law came to pay me a visit. She loves doing crafty things and I like to have a partner in crime, so we went ahead dressing the bin. After getting it cleaned and dried, we set about our task. It was alright to get the outside covered by a rope but the insides still looked unappealing. So we decided to line it with some fabric. Checkered fabrics always look chic and I remembered a dress that I had stopped wearing. It took a lot of cajoling from my SIL to sacrifice my beloved dress but then it was sheared and we got a lovely lining for the bin.

We pasted the bottom with cardboard. Then came the task of twining the rope. It was hard work and I was glad that I started this project with my SIL around. She is very neat and while one person applied Fevicol, the other held the rope tight and stuck it along the binder. After a couple of hours of hard work and sore fingers, we were rewarded with this. We were very pleased with the outcome.

I found a bow and stuck it at the top. What a difference a bow can make!

Now that it looked so lovely and also because it was lined with fabric, it couldn't be used as a waste bin and of course not as a potholder. So we decided to use it as a magazine holder.

The other bin has been painted with a basic coat and is waiting to be adorned further. I am planning a few worli motifs on it. Let's see. If and when it gets ready, I will post a picture.

BYOC - Bring It On!

I am striving to be a practitioner of BYOC - the acronym I have coined for 'Bring your own container'. I don't like takeaway food- mainly because it creates a lot of trash. Depending on the food that you order, takeaways come packaged in an assortment of plastic containers, cardboard packaging and carry bags.

The joy of eating without having cooked is marred by this trash-trail. Agreed that packaging can be recycled but as we know, recycling is fraught with its own issues. The R to strive for is 'REDUCE'. 

Apart from the green angle, getting food packed in plastics also has health implications. You don't know what all leach into food when hot food is put into plastic containers. So I like to carry my own containers. Be it for samosa-chutney, idli-sambar, doggy bag or sweets. What it needs, is a little forward planning. Now I have equipped both my cars with a host of things - an Anya kit, a cosmetics- medical kit, an under-the-weather kit, a shopping kit and recently a takeaway or eating out kit (spoons, forks and a couple of containers). What is missing from the last kit is a steel straw! Yes, you heard it right. I read about a lady who goes about carrying a steel straw and I am mightily impressed! She sure has taken BYOC to another level.

Given that packaging is getting costlier, vendors are passing on this cost to consumers. At many eating joints, you have to shell out a packaging charge. That is good news as it encourages people to BYOC. A few years back, when I carried my container to a sweet shop and asked for a discount in terms of saving them packaging cost, the guy was slightly taken aback. The manager was sent for and I gave my logic to him. He graciously accepted, more to humor me than for anything else. I asked him to make it a policy to give a discount to customers who BYOCed. He didn't feel the time had come for that idea. He would be gladly charging extra for his packaging now, I am sure. 

Another idea for restaurants is to pack food in steel containers against a deposit. You return the container, you get your deposit back. The containers can be monogrammed for ease of use of both parties. This would ensure guilt-free takeaways for those who haven't carried their containers. I am planning to float this idea to a nearby eatery. I will surely update if it is implemented. 

Of Return Gifts and Goody Bags

For Anya's first birthday party, which was on a fairy theme, I went berserk buying return gifts /party favors. I tried to buy age-gender-theme-appropriate trinkets which were budget-friendly too. And so I ended up buying fairy wings, crowns, jewelry,  stickers, badges, balls, photo frames, pencil boxes, card games, bubbles and whatnot. In addition, I bought birthday caps, face masks and party poppers. As pinãta fillers, I got pencils, erasers, small toys, hairpins and candies.

Goody bags mostly come filled with stuff we don't really need

At the end of my shopping spree, looking at the mountain of stuff, I felt guilty about the whole affair. Was I giving meaningful gifts or was I just trashing the planet? While keeping so many other criteria in mind, the green quotient had taken a beating. I silently vowed to be more eco-conscious from the next birthday onwards.

Anya is nearing her third birthday now. I have been to many more birthday parties since she turned one and have emerged wiser, I must say. Frankly speaking, return gifts are not the greatest idea, either for the environment or for kids. Kids these days have got enough and more. It would really not matter to them if they got one more lunch box, pencil box or a little toy. They, however, love to open gifts. They play with new toys for a while and then these get dumped in a pile of unused toys.

Now that return gifts have become de rigeur, one can't avoid them. I have read of moms who are courageous enough to refuse return gifts. Maybe when Anya grows a little older, we can talk about it and decide on a course of action. As of now, she just wants whatever her friends have. I am also not brave enough to stop giving return gifts. The most prudent course of action now is to switch to environment-friendly meaningful gifts which are also fun.

A few things that come to my mind are:

Books - Books can always be found to suit different ages and themes. Activity books would keep kids engrossed for a while.

Plants - Kids can decorate a pot as a part of activity at the party and then carry a plant in it. Taking care of a plant, watering it daily, would bring kids closer to nature.

Homemade crafts - If you are a crafty mom, you can make kid-appropriate handicrafts like photo frames, finger puppets, kid's nameplates etc. A dear friend of mine is one such creative mom and she made nameplates for all the little guests.

A home-crafted name-plate received as a return gift which I absolutely treasure

Handicrafts - Channapatna toys, toys made of clay etc. would be a refreshing and eco-friendly gift idea.

Birthday Activity - Kids can decorate cookies or an ice cream stick picture frame. That would not only provide an activity during the party, kids can take something handmade home. For a chef themed party, a friend let kids write their names on their aprons. For a bookworm themed birthday party, they can decorate a bookmark and for a Harry Potter themed birthday, the natural choice is a wand :)

Can green and fun go together? I am looking for more ideas. If you have any suggestions, do let me know.

Hawaiian Themed Green Birthday Party - Part 4 - Goody Bags

A friend had handed out return gifts in self-made newspaper bags. I was hugely impressed and decided to toe the green line. Fortunately, I could outsource the job to D and he came out with flying colors. We chose glossy supplements of newspaper. To give a Hawaiian feel, a hibiscus picture was pasted on each bag. We did not get time to color the flower. Gifting crayons as a part of goodies might have been a good idea but I desisted. (See my post: Of return gifts and goody bags).

In order to go the whole nine yards, I even made the glue at home. When I was a kid, we used lai - a boiled mixture of maida (white flour) and water. I wanted to recreate it.

How to make homemade glue:

Ingredients:

1 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar,1.5 cups water, 1 tsp vinegar. (The ratio of flour to sugar should be 3:1.)

Method: 

Mix flour and sugar. Then slowly add a little water to form a lump-free paste. Add the rest of the water, vinegar and put on slow flame till the paste thickens. Cool and store in an airtight container. It can be refrigerated and used for a month or even more. Try it out for yourself. Vinegar is to preserve the glue. If you are using up the glue immediately, you can skip it.

What went into the goody bag:

Though I could not avoid buying plastic totally, I tried to be more meaningful and minimal. Girls got slipper-shaped hairpins and floral hairbands, bubble blowers and candy. Boys got play dough, bubble blowers and candy. The green thing I wanted to do was to give an aloe vera plant to each kid (aloe vera is found abundantly in Hawaii), in a pot customised with the kid's name and decorated with a tiki mask. I got the plants too but finally faced severe time-crunch. Had it been included in the goody bag, this is how it would have looked. 

The mask is not eco-friendly though as it is made of plaster of paris.

For future, I am making a list of green things that can go in a goody bag. If you have any suggestions, they are welcome with an open heart :)

With this write-up, I finally come to an end on the series on Anya's green birthday party. I had a lot of fun putting together this party. An interesting fact is that the nearer a party is, faster the ideas pour in. But then, I inevitably run short of time. Hope to get green ideas in time for her next birthday party.

Hawaiian Themed Green Birthday Party Part 3 - Food & Entertainment

Welcome drink:

What could have been more natural and befitting the theme than tender coconut water! We bought dozens of tender coconuts, decorated them with umbrella cocktail sticks and placed them below surfboards towards the entrance. As soon as a guest came, she was welcomed with a lei. Then D carved an opening in the coconut and served it to the guest. 

Table decor and food:

Incidentally, I had bought a woven-palm-leaf mat and baskets from a recent trip to Kerala. The mat came in handy to cover the dining table. Sides of the table were covered with banana leaf skirt. The cake table was also decorated with the same skirting. In addition, baby pineapples, bird of paradise were put on the sidewall. Unfortunately, we don't have a picture.

Since the party was at home, I used steel plates for kids and Corelle for adults. (I had to keep my finger crossed throughout the snack time but it was worth it). One of the best purchases I have made are these colorful Ikea kids cutlery sets. Though they are plastic, their reusability saves the day. 

The only disposable thing I used were glasses. I kept a few steel ones but had to have disposables at hand which I made sure were paper. From next party onwards, I am  quite tempted to request parents to carry water in sippers/bottles for their little ones. In that way, I will have to keep glasses only for other drinks. I wonder if the suggestion would be well received and more importantly, acted upon.

Other than cake and ice-cream, food was mostly made at home. We made pav bhaji, pineapple pasta, fruit salad, a coconut-capsicum salad, and idlis. One thing which I was quite proud of and can't help boasting about were volcanoes fashioned out of papads. The plan was to light some coal and put under each volcano to give a smoking effect but like many other ideas, this had to be shelved due to lack of time. 

Games:

Kids had a go at hula-hoop. Adults tested their flexibility at limbo. I used a bamboo pole where one end was held against a wall and the other by my niece. Guests had a gala time and surprisingly were so good at it that we had to revise the lowermost marking to decide upon the winner!