Top Green New Year's Eve Party Tips

1. Beat the crowds
   There's a certain excitement to being out in a group on New Year's Eve, but if you stay home and host your own ring-in-the-new shindig, you'll save transportation emissions—and, of course, money. You'll also be able to better control the environmental impact of your night, from sending out email invitations to preventing the food and paper waste that comes from bars and restaurants. (Oh, and you can let your friends crash so no one has to drive.) Even the Times Square ball is a little greener since switching to LED bulbs in 2006—isn't it time you were, too?


2. Choose glass over paper
   Once you've decided to have everyone over for the big event, you'll have to find a way keep them all fed and hydrated—without ending up with a pile of wasted plastic cups. Look for brands made from recycled paper—like those from Treecycle who makes biodegradable dishes and cups from sugarcane fiber—and make sure you compost those after the party. Even better, if you don't own enough china and glassware for all your friends, rent some: they look nicer, they're reusable, and you still won't wake up to a sink full of dishes. Check Rental HG to find a rental location in your area.


3. Satisfy the appetites
   Your guests will need some food to counteract the effects of all those drinks. Keep it simple with a spread of easy appetizers, homemade salsa or hummus, and fresh fruit and vegetable trays-with organic ingredients grown as close to you as possible (preferably from within 100 miles can help you track down a farmers market or community supported agriculture program in your hometown or, if you live in parts of the world where markets close for the winter, you can order online from Local Harvest's vendors—you can buy some carbon offsets to balance out the shipping expenditure. And you don't have to spend your entire year-end bonus, either—your party can be festive and fun without breaking the bank.


4. Pour some green drinks
   Get your guests in the party spirit with a bar well-stocked with eco-friendly cocktails—whether it's organic vodka mixed with juice from your local orchard; beer from the brewery one town over; or biodynamic wine. Or make your own: Our How to Go Green: Cocktails guide offers recipes for easy DIY gin and ginger ale, plus specialty drinks like a Lemon Drop or a Rusty Nail, which tastes way better than it sounds, we promise.


5. Decorate responsibly
   This is the year you can finally forego those plastic 2009 glasses, the cheesy top hats, the disposable noisemakers, the paper streamers. Try making your own decorations out of recyclable materials, from soda can lanterns to plastic bottle snowflakes; for a more elegant look, put together centerpieces and place settings that are stylish and eco-friendly. Skip the throw-away noisemakers and replace them with nutshells in a can or cardboard tube, or with dried beans rattling around inside two stapled-together paper plates.


6. Toast with organic bubbly
   Champagne has long been the drink of special occasions, whether anniversaries, wedding receptions, or job promotions. Raise your glass to '08 with champagne and sparkling wine made from organic grapes and without synthetic additions-then make sure to recycle (or reuse!) your bottles and send your corks off for reuse in Design Within Reach's chair design contest or for recycling through Korks 4 Kids.


7. Pucker up
   What's New Year's Eve without someone to kiss at midnight? Keep your lips soft with all-natural lip balm, like those from Revolution Organics or J.R. Watkins, and banish bad breath with organic breath mints from St. Claire's. Still single? No problem. Dating sites like Green Passions, Green Romance, and Planet Earth Singles will have you watching the ball drop with a fellow treehugger in no time.


8. Cure the hangover
   No matter how much fun you had the night before, spending all of January 1 feeling like death on toast is no way to start the new year. Start the detox with a blend of organic herbs and seasonings, like those in Lotus Root Cooler or Ginseng Licorice Tea. Drink plenty of water—but not from disposable bottles—and fight headaches with thyme or peppermint tea. Tea alone won't help your body recover from last night; fill up on organic, free-range eggs, too, since they contain plenty of cysteine, which breaks down toxins in the liver. Other hangover helpers include bananas (for their potassium) and fruit juices (for their energy-boosting natural sugars and vitamins). Don't depend on coffee, burnt toast, or more alcohol—none of these will help your body replenish its stores. Fried food, while delicious, is better as a hangover preventative—it slows down the rate of alcohol absorption.


9. Help keep food tradition alive (with a green twist)
   Different cultures and regions each have their own version of a lucky New Year's Day meal—black-eyed peas in the South, pork and sauerkraut for the Pennsylvania Dutch, 12 grapes eaten at the stroke of midnight in Spain. Other favorable foods include cooked greens, legumes, fish, and pastries or cakes. No matter which meal you choose, support local farmers and markets when you shop for ingredients, and choose free-range meat, organic fruit, and other natural supplies whenever you can.


10. Make some resolutions
    Many of the same resolutions we make year after year—lose weight, eat healthy, stop smoking, get organized—aren't just good for you: they're also good for the environment. Read on for foolproof ways to do the Earth some good while (finally) sticking to your new plans.

FROM: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/go-green/new-years/new-years-party.html

Minutes 3 December

Mrs Barrett unfortunately couldn't make it to our meeting today, however, we as a council brought all our ideas together to see how we were progressing.

James, Oliver and Sam reported about their Budget findings. They looked at solar panels for electricity and solar panels to heat water.

• Solar Panels for Electricity;

Electrical solar power works by transforming the energy from the sun into a reusable form of electricity, a process known as Photovoltaic (or PV for short). Your solar panels act as a collecting tray, helping you catch the sun’s rays. The bigger the panel, the more energy you can collect. The energy collected is stored for your future use in a battery. Sometimes you collect more energy than you actually need so with larger panels a voltage regulator should be fitted to control the flow of energy and prevent battery damage. The other component you will possibly need is an inverter, which enables you to run 240V mains-driven appliance.

Grants available for this are:

1. www.segen.co.uk where we can get half the cost paid but the academy would have to pay the other half.
2. Encams, Eco-Schools is a programme of seven elements that schools can adopt including organising an environmental review, establishing an action plan, undertaking curriculum studies on environmental topics and organising a day of environmental action. Open to all schools; the scheme is also operating in Europe Deadline: Ongoing. No closing date. Funding Body: Eco-Schools Award Scheme
3. http://www.eco-schools.org.uk/grants/ To take advantage of this exciting opportunity your school needs to have: Achieved a Bronze or Silver award with the Eco-Schools programme, Completed your Environmental Review, Identified a project, Completed an Action Plan which includes the project for which funds have been requested, Chosen any required energy saving white goods from the Currys website www.currys.co.uk, Completed a grant application. Deadline: 1st of February 2009

Ideas for where these could be used are in the ICT gallery, MO2, the sports hall or the mall area.

• Solar Panels for Heating Water;

1. Scottish Power, Powergen, EDF Energy, Typically provide funding up to around £30k, Scottish Power has a focus on educational aspects of schemes, Scheme needs to be visible and Utility company will want to be involved with the publicity and project launch, Will fund 100% of project costs but prefer to match other funding sources, Funding rounds tend to be oversubscribed and next round of deadlines are end Dec 2004/Jan 2009

Ravneet, Ammarah, Anjali, Jessica, Zoya and Aysha are involved in the Assemblies;

• The assemblies which we are to attend are Year 7 and Year 8 in the first two weeks of term 3 (January). All six of the group, would go into each assembly together to present ideas better and to show a better stand for the eco-council.

The improved Blog was shown;

• The improvements were approved by the council. However, we felt that we needed a new logo. An idea was to launch this as a competition when we visited the assemblies similar to last year when we tried this with motto's or slogans.

The Notice Board has been completed and revamped by Ellie and Andrew;

• This is a good achievement. As it know has a lot more relevant information and has our eco-policy and our plan to what we want to achieve.
  
• We have a section on there for 'THIS WEEK WE LOVE...' We discussed how we could judge which teacher or department was the best for the week.
  

1. Some ideas were to have teachers tell us what they have done, but this would cause work for the teachers and many of them may not participate and would simply make it up to win.
2. We could ask Mr Cuury, who teachers have to e-mail when they want the recycle bin emptied, to forward us those e-mails and see who recycles the most - but this can be bias as ICT use the most amount of paper so they would need to empty their bins more frequently whereas PE don't really use paper.
   
3. Another idea was to have a league table, similar to the premier league, where each week we could go and check which rooms are green (lights, pc, air conditioning, projector off, with no teacher in the room). We could award 3 points for a room that was fully green, 1 point for a room that has one mistake, and a room that was occupied we cannot count as it is being used. Once all the points are collected, we would have to average them to how many classrooms were judged in the department (each department has a different number of classrooms). Then the department with the highest average goes at the top of the league and could be placed on the notice board.

Other ideas;

A Green Hunt - for a term or period of time we could place a question or a statement or an anagram on the notice board and the departments would have to work it out and find the correct answer. This would encourage people to look at the notice board and get involved in the eco-side of life. For the quiz we could give a variety of statements, but start of with one and increase it as the days/weeks go by to help the teachers, and see which department wins.

Also a website which was found www.eco-tube.com

Next Meeting: Next Wednesday

Minutes 26 November

The main purpose of today's meeting was to begin implementing what we want to do in the school to make it a better place.

At the beginning we were joined by a guest: Mr Archer. He is the academy's financial director. Last year we had a report written by Carbon Trust and this report outlined areas we could improve the academy to make it more environmentally friendly and therefore save money. Mr Archer had a meeting with the Governors, the night before, and has spoken to them about the areas we could improve.

There are 3 main areas: electricity, gas and site voltage production. Small things that can help this are;
- asking the academies supplier to lower the voltage in which it comes to the academy
- getting some sensor lights that only come on when light is needed and depending on how much light needed only give so much. We have some of these in the sports hall and the mall area however these do need changing.

Our council treasures James and Sam are to speak with Mr Archer about their research into grants and how we can make out school more eco-friendly.

For the majority of the meeting, everyone split off into groups and began planning and drafting ideas or collecting research.

Ravneet, Ammarah, Jessica and Anjali began looking at how they would present the Eco-councils findings to year 7 and 8's and how we can re-introduce this blog. They have thought of some ideas on making a video and small things that can be done by each individual. These ideas will be shown in assemblies at the beginning of next term.

Adil and Mohammad began looking at how we could add a page into the front of out academic planners to let other students and new year 7 students about the eco-council, the blog and how they can help the environment. They began collecting facts and figures which could be used as part of this page.

Next Week: Mrs Barreth, one of the academies governor are to join us to find out first hand information about what our plans are.

The Mysterious Sweets

Over the last month, a couple of people the eco-council, have been on a secret mission. One day after school, when usually there's only the teachers left, we have been placing sweets on a teachers door if they had all their lights, PC, projector and air conditioning off if they were not in the room.

There has been a lot of commotion and the teachers were trying to work it out. Well they were finally told today why they were given sweets or in the majority of cases why they were not given any sweets. Which was really disappointing.

In the next term, spot checks will be done and more sweets will be given out.

MEET THE GREENS

If you cannot see the video above, follow the link http://www.youtube.com/v/bg1haF1naww&hl=en&fs=1

SHREK TELLS YOU HOW TO BE GREEN

If you can't see the video above follow this link : http://www.youtube.com/v/bHs1wTD4tW8&hl=en&fs=1

Meeting - Wednesday 8th October 2008

At the second meeting students wanted to spend more time investigating some of the suggestions that had been put forward from the previous week. They organised themselves into groups:

Funding - James and Sam both spent time looking into what grants and funds were available to apply to, to help us establish some of the schemes and ideas that have been discussed e.g. solar cells.

Fair trade - Joanne and Andrew spent their time investigating what we would need to do to become a fair trade school.

Wildlife and Bird Garden - Zoya and Anjali both looked into somewhere within the schools grounds where we could establish a garden. They went to speak to Mr Penkitt to see if this is something that DT would be happy to support.

Eco Fairies - Joanne, Zoya, Harsimrat and Oliver all volunteered to stay behind late after school to become eco-fairies (more to be revealed later).

Swap Shop - the rest of the students discussed the viability of introducing a 'swap shop' where students could bring items in that they no longer wanted/needed and swap them with other people. The idea is that we reduce the amount of things that we throw away and recycle more instead.

Updates to be provided at the next meeting.

New Academic Year, New Council

The Eco Council have been re-established with a combination of students from Year 10 and Year 12.

Year 12 - Joanne, Zoya, Anjali, Jess, Harsimrat, Oliver, Sam, James, Mohammed and Adil.

Year 10 - Ravneet, Ellie, Andrew, Ammarah, Ayesha and Mohammed.

We first go together Wednesday 1st October. The meeting was mostly spent discussing what had happened last year and what ideas the students had for the forth coming year.

Some of the ideas included:

- establing recycling for bottles and cans

- getting funding for a wind turbine, solar panel or solar cells

- improving the outside environment and encouraging more wildlife

- running eco workshops in school

- setting up a swap shop.

The next meeting is Wednesday 8th October.

Eco Awareness Week

More than 40% of Co2 emissions
are the direct result of
the actions taken by individuals

Week commencing 14 April we will be launching an Eco Awareness Week in school, where there will be something different happening in school each day.

On the Monday we will be kicking it all off with a ‘Make a Pledge’ day. We will be in Mall asking everyone in school to make a pledge for how they can reduce their Carbon Footprint for that week )and hopefully even longer). There will be lots of suggestion such as:

√ Change your light bulbs to low energy ones
√ Turn off the light when you go out of a room
√ Turn all appliances off at the wall after use
√ Boil only enough water for your drink – don’t fill the kettle right up
√ Turn off your mobile phone charger as soon as the phone is charged up
√ Only buy food from Europe, reduce your food air miles
√ Don’t buy food containing palm oil
√ Recycle cans/plastic/paper
√ Check everything is off in your classroom at lunchtime and at the end of the day.

There will be a free treat for everyone who makes a pledge, so start thinking about what you can do and come and see us.

If you have any other suggestions for what we can all do to reduce our Carbon Footprint, then add your comments here.

Everyone's going green...

It may be fashionable at the moment to go green but even if companies and corporations are doing it for the publicity, then that's ok - more green is good green!

Check out this series of America's Next Top Model. The green theme is raising awareness, the show itself is trying to use less resources, and, hopefully, the viewers watching it are being inspired to do something about their ecological footprint.

If Tyra and the wanna be model can try to reduce their carbon footprints - then we all can!

Envrionmental Issues in Primary Schools

My daughter has been looking at envrionmental issues this term at her primary school. She is only in reception and they have been looking at recycling, endangered animals and other environmentatl issues. It all comes to a head today with their going green day. She has also been singing a little song over the past few weeks about recycling. See what you think!

Meeting 5/02/2008

Mrs Vickerman has spoke to Mrs Watson about the awareness week/day in April and she has approved this in principle. Mrs Watson recommended that we focus on organising a special day with Year 7, that can run each year with the next intake of Year 7 students. Chloe and Ashley both went to speak to Mrs Robinson to get the dates confirmed. We talked about

having a whole week of awareness activities finishing on the Friday with a dress down day, where students can wear something green. Activities such as creating green eco songs in Music, having paperless lessons, etc were put forward.

There is a possibility that some of the students will be able to go along to the next planning meeting for the propsed new building outside. This will be a good opportunity for us to ask questions and speak to the builders. Both Ashley, Tehreem and Chloe were insterested in this. Chloe will speak to Mrs Watson to find out when the next meeting is.

Mrs Watson has also said that she would be happy to sit down with the Eco Council and discuss a Green policy for the school. In preparation for this both Anjali and Aysha both did some research on other schools policies and have drafted something to be discussed at the next meeting.

Imogen from the Year 7 Eco Busters came along to speak to Najda to see what they could do to help out. Najda has asked that they carry out the survey from the Eco Schools website.

Ambar, Hemash and Oliver all had a meeting with Mrs Rasimowicz again to finalise the details for the letter that is going out next term. The council decided today that we would now send this to Year 7 parents initially and then roll it out from there. oliver has made a start on drafting the letter.

Mrs Vickerman had spoken to the people from the Carbon Trust today and it looks like we will be having our Carbon survey early next term.

Finally we were supposed to go to the Year 9 assembly today but this has now been postponed to next term.

Meeting 28/01/2008

We have achived the Bronze Award from Eco Schools. We are now focussed on the Silver Award.

The Year 7 assembly went really well, especially when they were told what they could win. Ashley and Aysha decided to create a poster showing all of the Post 16 Slaves on offer to encourage the Year 7 students to Blog.

Hemash and Ambar went to see mrs watson to ask if she would approve a seperate letter to go out to parents next term, rather than wait for the newsletter at the end of the term. Mrs watson pointed out that this would be using additional paper, so the council have decided that they still want to do it, and that they will use A5 paper instead.

Josh has been given the task of coming up with something special for the Year 11 assembly at the end of Feb. The Eco council are worried that the Year 11 students wouldn't respond well to just a presentation.

We discussed collecting old mobile phones to help raise some funds. This is something that we might do next term. There are some sites that offer to plant trees for old mobile phones.

Finally we discussed what our major project should be for the Silver and Green award from Eco Schools. We eventually agreed that organising an awareness week within school would be best. We are planning on the week commencing 14/04/2008. We are hoping that each department will have a green focus for the day or the whole week. We will need to speak to the Head of Departments again to get them to support this.

Year 7 & 8 Eco Competition

Year 7 & 8 we want your suggestions for how we could make Dixons Academy Greener. What could we do in school that would help us improve our Eco credentials?????????????

Please add your comments by clicking on the comments link directly below this post... Remember to add your Name and Form!!!!!!

All suggestions are welcome.

Remember the top 10 suggestion will win a Post 16 Slave for the day!!!

Meeting 22/1/2008

Najda gave feedback from the Head of Departments meeting that she went to with Harsimrat and Anjali. All of the HODs were supportive and have agreed to email Najda and Mrs vickerman with ideas on what they could do to improve their green credentials by Friday 18th Jan.

Today we started to plan who would go to each assembly and let the school know what we are doing; to promote the Blog and ask for ideas. We are starting by going to see Year 7 and 8 next week. Chloe, Matty, Hemash, Ambar and Nyomi volunteered to go to the assemblies. They broke off to plan what they were going to say.

We also went back to looking at how we could identify what green topics we covered in school in each department. Chloe, Oliver and Nafisa all went to speak to the Heads of Department to find out. We would like to put all of this information together so we can see what is being covered when and where. This will help us make some suggestions on what else could be covered.

Hemash and Ambar had a meeting with Mrs Rasimowicz to help establish how we can collate the reply slips from the newsletter. They spoke to her about what would need to go on the reply slips and and what information the form tutors would need to tick them all off.

Josh is going to speak to Mrs wright, Mr Freeburn about reducing the warning printing limit acroos school. The current limit is 499, so at the moment if you print a large document by mistake it will print automatically up to 499 pages. But if we reduce this to 100, all documents over 100 pages would need to be released from the helpdesk.

Meeting 8/1/2008

We did have a brief meeting on the 18th Dec, but this was just a quick get together before the holidays.
This week Najda meet with Mrs Wright from SMT to discuss representatives going along to the Head of Department meeting to discuss some Eco Initiatives.

Hemash gave an update following his and Ambar’s meeting with Mr Weller. Mr Weller was very supportive of what the Eco Council were trying to achieve and he gave his support to purchasing one a ‘Bolt on’ to a printer to enable it to print double sided. He also gave permission for the Eco Council to go ahead with the imitative of getting parents to request mail from the Academy via email. This is something that both Hemash and Ambar will pursue.

Josh gave an update following his meeting with Mr Freeburn. It turns out that all students have a print allowance for documents up to 499 pages each time they print. Everyone thought this was very excessive and thought that it should be reduced. This would mean that students who wanted to print really big documents would have to get permission from the help desk. Josh will follow this up with Mr Freeburn.

Tehreem, Harsimrat, Nafisa and Ashley updated everyone on what they had been doing to organise the Awareness Day. They had asked Mrs Vickerman to email all council members with a list of Eco Groups to be contacted before the next meeting.
Harsimrat was also planning on conducting her second survey to see what resources were being wasted in the classrooms that Thursday – results to follow.