11/20/08

Green Drinks a fun way to learn about progressive ideas

By Beckye Randall

Most often, eco-friendly ideas and projects are presented in a lecture hall accompanied by slides of graphs and statistics. Afterwards, the attendees may nibble on stale cookies and tepid coffee while discussing the abstract concepts.

Green Drinks, an international grassroots organization, is working to change all that. The movement began in London in 1989 when environmental activists decided they could get more done by throwing a party instead of hosting a meeting.

Today there are Green Drinks groups in 425 cities worldwide, and one of them meets monthly right here in Snohomish County.

On a recent Tuesday evening, the local Green Drinks meeting was hosted by Ronin Northwest, an Arlington property development company, at the site of the former Country Charm Dairy. Now dubbed the Village Store, the neighborhood shop features goods produced by local farmers, artists and craftspeople.

The Village Store complex, located in the old dairy barn, is also evolving into Graafstra Center, a cooperative enterprise that will promote local agriculture by providing farmers with a shared facility for production and packaging of their goods. The center also offers incubator space for local food producers.

Rick Reed, project manager for the Northwest Agriculture Business Center, is enthusiastic about the potential of the Graafstra Center. "This will be a genuine community center for food production and a great benefit for local farmers," he said.

Karen Erickson of Snohomish began attending Green Drinks meetings in May. "I'm concerned about sustainable living and low-impact development," she said. A volunteer member of the county's Sustainable Development Task Force, she heard about Green Drinks from the task force's director, Valerie Steel.

Steel and her business partner Mary Ehrlich are known as the "godmothers" of Green Drinks. Owners of Greening Properties, Inc., a real estate firm specializing in sustainable housing, Steel and Ehrlich organized the first Green Drinks meeting in Everett in 2006.

The local group's Web site explains "Green Drinks is simple, unstructured and rather organic. People have found jobs, developed new ideas, done deals and had epiphanies at Green Drinks."

Over steaming cups of soup and refreshing local brews, the two dozen or so people at the most recent Green Drinks gathering talked about shared interests and concerns.

Reed's passion is the development of strong local food networks. "The national food network is based on easy access to cheap fossil fuel, and that is no longer sustainable," he said. "Today, our food travels an average of 1,500 miles to our dinner tables. That uses a lot of energy and creates massive amounts of pollution. Plus, only about 2 to 4 percent of imported food is inspected before it reaches grocery stores, which can certainly affect our health."

The Northwest Agriculture Business Center has received federal funding for the creation and startup of a Puget Sound Food Network. This project will formalize a regional network of growers and producers, retailers and food service, along with operating infrastructure such as processing, storage and transportation for the purpose of increasing sales of locally produced products.

"We're looking for more efficient farm-to-market solutions," said Reed.

Karen and Greg Oakes of Arlington came to the event without an agenda. "We're just here to support the idea of environmental stewardship," said Karen Oakes.

"And for the beer," Greg Oakes added with a smile.

Lawrence Kramer was on hand to network with others who are concerned about sustainable development. "This economic change may actually be good for us as a nation," he said. "It will force us to be more realistic about how we live and how we gratify our needs."

Taking a cosmic outlook, Kramer continued, "Maybe it's the universe's way of waking us up."

Tyler Rourke, an Everett resident, agreed. "The U.S. culture is still young. In terms of cultural understanding, America is an adolescent."

He and partner Brittney Baldwin are interested in the Stillwater School that operates on the Graafstra property. Attending the Arlington Green Drinks event, the first one held in north Snohomish County, gave them an opportunity to find out more about the private school and meet like-minded people.

Marilyn Rosenberg is the owner of Zippy's Java Lounge in Everett, one of the more environmentally-aware food establishments in the area. She attends Green Drinks events to share her ideas about eco-friendly business practices.

"We have worm bins both indoors and out, and we compost all our food scraps," said Rosenberg. "No food goes into garbage cans."

The restaurant, located at 1804 Hewitt in Everett, also features gluten-free and wheat-free dishes as well as vegan fare.

Although the evening was mostly unstructured, Valerie Steel took the floor for a few minutes to talk about Green Drinks and introduce Tasha Branch, the event's host.

"Let's all raise our glasses and toast our beautiful blue planet while we figure out how NOT to toast our beautiful blue planet," said Steel.

To find out more about Green Drinks, visit www.greendrinks.org.

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