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.