22 Days of Green Gift Giving: Gift Idea #2

Green Giving Tip

According to SupportLocalBusiness.org for every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $45 goes back into the community and our tax base. For every $100 spent at a chain store, only $14 comes back.  So support local businesses and you can do it today! 

The 2nd annual Small Business Saturday® is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.   Shop Small^sm at your favorite local stores and help fuel the economy. When we all shop small, it will be huge. 

Gift Idea #2

One of my favorite small businesses is nest – natural elements selected thoughtfully – which chooses products that are:

• Organic
• Recycled
• Environmentally friendly
• Fair trade
• Hand made
• Supportive of a healthy lifestyle

Here is one of great gift items that nest has to offer:  

Sari Scarves

$50 each

Made from recycled vintage sari material and fair-trade. Many assorted colors.  The company also supports Trees For the Future.

This item is not available online, so come to Clarksville, Maryland to see all the great gift items nest has to offer.

If you are not local to nest, support a small business by checking out Green America’s National Green Pages for a local, green business near you.

22 Days of Green Gift Giving: Gift Idea #1

Green Giving Tip

This may seem obvious, but select your gift thoughtfully.  Are you purchasing something the recipient truly needs and can use or are you just buying something to buy something? I always feel better when I put a little thought into a gift and the return to me is the happiness on the face of the friend or family member because they received a useful gift!

  

Gift Idea #1

For the tea lover on your list, consider this gift idea from eco-artware. 

Carved Wood Tea Strainer

Cost $14

Handmade and carved from sustainably harvested wild cherry wood in a no-waste Pennsylvania studio, the ovular strainer fits any tea cup and is very easy to use--its oval shape extends beyond the cup for easy lifting. The piece also covers the tea during steeping which keeps in all the heat.

United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiative Global Roundtable Gala Dinner

Photo by Kieta Mall Skoglund

I was honored when the United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) asked me to produce their Gala Dinner on Night 1 of their international Global Roundtable.  Held at the spectacular National Building Museum, I knew I'd have to bring my A-team to ensure an A-game! 

In order for an event to look spectacular at the NBM, you need to have top notch lighting, so I enlisted the help of John Farr Lighting Design.  Years ago, it was John who informed me about LED lighting and not only how it can transform a room because you can easily change the colors of the lights, but how it is truly green because it uses less energy than traditional lighting.  It is also safer because the lights are cool to the touch. 

Next up was Main Event Caterers -- the greenest caterer in town (in my mind at least)!  Awarded Catering Magazine's Caterer of the Year in 2010,they recycle 95% of all glass, plastic, metal cardboard and office paper.  Disposables are 100% compostable and food matter is composted vs. being thrown in the landfill.  Furthermore, they are 100% wind powered and they use bio diesel fuel in their vehicles.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg.  When I ask them that I want food that is local and organic and seafood that is sustainably sourced, they don't flinch.  When I ask for locally sourced wine and beer and organic beverages instead of sodas, they don't blink an eye because they get it.  They truly get it.  Read more about their green initiatives. 

Instead of spending money -- and using lots of fabric -- to separate our cocktail reception in the East Court from the dinner in the Center Court, we asked Dale Harmon at Plants Alive! to select plants that could be placed between the large arches to serve as natural barriers. 

And finally, Perfect Settings provided the rentals, including linens and bamboo chairs, and votives powered by battery operated LED lights.  A very sustainable party rental company, they rent recycle bins and take back all the recycling from your event, reuse linen hangers and actually bale the plastic that the linens come in.  Because of this, I will ALWAYS be a devoted client! 

Life Pieces To Masterpieces' Strong Men...STRONGER Gala

The night after the Bethesda Green Gala, the lori hill event productions team was back to work for the first Life Pieces To Masterpieces Strong Men...STRONGER Gala.  Life Pieces To Masterpieces (LPTM) created the Strong Men...STRONGER Awards to honor three men who embody LPTM's core values and are representative of exemplary "gentlemen, scholars, artists, and athletes." 

 

Wendell Pierce, of HBO’s The Wire as well as Treme, served as the Master of Ceremonies for the Gala and was a true pro and delight.     

lori hill event productions partnered with Amy Harbison of Open Window Creative Strategies LLC to help LPTM with the creation of key messages for the event as well as garnering media coverage which included a half hour segment on NBC 4's Viewpoint, coverage on NBC4 10 pm news, and placements in The Washington Post The Root, Capital Business, WTOP Radio, and Scene Bisnow.  Fabulous work, Amy!  

The Strong Men…STRONGER Gala was held at the Willard InterContinental Hotel, in the heart of Washington, DC, right on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House.  For those of you familiar with this very elegant, upscale venue, you may not realize that The Willard is a very green hotel!  I learned years ago about their landmark green initiatives and was excited that I was able to produce an event on their property.  Recently awarded the International Hotel & Restaurant Association's Environmental Award for Sustainability, the Willard has embarked on a Responsible Business program.  This holistic plan is comprised of numerous interwoven sustainable projects designed for a luxurious urban hospitality experience in harmony with social and ecological consciousness.  Read more here.

LPTM is an after school program designed to serve young, underserved, African American males living in the nation’s capital. Each day after school, over 90 apprentices engage in a rigorous, unique and effective arts-based character building curriculum which guides all of their programming.   

 

2nd Annual Bethesda Green Gala

For the second year in a row, I worked with Bethesda Green to produce the 2^nd Annual Bethesda Green Gala which raises funds for Bethesda Green and presents Bethesda Magazine’s Green Awards to local businesses, organizations and individuals.  

No surprise, the Gala featured numerous green initiatives, many of which are featured and pictured below. Special thanks to balance photography for serving as our event photographer that evening. 

 

Held at Round House Theatre, the entrance was decked out with gorgeous seasonal flowering plants and trees from American Plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The registration consoles and bars were made with AGL recycled plastic grass provided by Perfect Settings rental company which also provided table linens and metal cocktail tables, as well as dishware, glassware and flatware so that we could avoid using disposables.

Our name badge inserts were made of 100% recycled paper, the holders were made of recycled content, and the lanyards were made of recycled soda cans.  After the event, inserts were recycled and holders and lanyards were reused for future events.  

Honest Tea provided bottles of their tea and Honest Ade.

Honest Tea TEO (Tea Executive Officer) Seth Goldman wore a little bling in honor of the gala. 

Local winery Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyards provided red and white wine.

Travelling Bean served cappucino and espresso made with coffee beans from Chesapeake Bay Roasting Company, a local roaster of organic, fair trade coffee beans.

Baklava Couture, which make baklava with local, farm fresh ingredients and nothing artificial, provided dessert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast of Thousands Entertainment provided trees on stilts which thoroughly entertained the crowd. 

The silent auction featured sustainable gifts and services.  77% of the auction items had an environmental component. 

That's me with Nathaniel Corn of balance photography celebrating a successful evening.

Religion and Sustainability: A Very Logical Link

I’ve been spending this week in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with the Unitarian Universalists of the Mid-Atlantic Region for a sort of camp/conference kind of gathering at DeSales University – a Catholic school near Allentown, Pennsylvania.  Yes, the Unitarians are hanging out where the Catholics live, learn and worship.  It’s all good.  Truly.  

My experience with the UUs (as we call ourselves) has been that they are pretty earth-conscious folks.  Regardless of your religion, if you believe in a creator, I believe that your creator would want you to take care of his/her creation (that would be Earth).  So I was quite ecstatic to see that DeSales is green!  The first thing I really noticed was the corn based cups in their dining hall and their willingness to serve lots of vegetarian and vegan options to our group (there are a lot of us who avoid meat and dairy).  They even advertise that their dishes (they use dishware and use disposables/take out containers sparingly) are washed with eco-friendly soap! 

Upon further investigation, I found out that it went beyond the dining hall.  Not only do they offer single stream recycling, but they also encourage the students who live on campus (70% of their entire population) to conserve energy, water and to reduce/reuse/recycle.  They even have a monthly water and energy conservation competition sponsored by Residence Life. The hall with the highest percentage of reduction in water and energy usage per occupant is awarded a prize.

Their list of green initiatives would inspire anyone.  Check it out and encourage your place of worship to go green if it isn’t already.

Tasty, Healthy Snacks

BKind Foods is a triple bottom line company that markets and distributes organic and natural snacks and beverages that are kind to your body and the planet. 

They work with schools, businesses, hospitals, community centers, colleges and universities, caterers and hotels to provide healthy snack alternatives and can create customized menus. 

I’ve tasted about a dozen of their products and not only are they healthy, but they're wonderfully delicious too!  All their products meet the following criteria: 

• No artificial flavor
• No artificial color
• No preservatives
• No high fructose corn syrup
• Socially responsible business practices

Some of the products I’ve tried are:

-          Original Multi Grain Chips

-          PopCorners (popped corn chips)

-          Sweet Potato Chips

-          Baked Lentil Chips

-          Mini Crunchy Vanilla Cookies (my favorite!)

-          Organic Fruit Snacks (my boyfriend’s young sons ate this up in a heartbeat)

-          Hippie Chips (baked potato chips with hemp – tasty!)

-          Granola Plank (a granola bar that is chewy and tasty)

There are even more than this.  You can see some of them listed on their web site. 

Contact Jason Schwartz at 301.246.0146, jason@bkindvending.com.