Start Good Blog

Energy and enthusiasm sum up Green Drinks. I have never felt so good about the people around me. It is a bit odd, but I really have not talked to anyone passionate about the environment face to face other than with a professor I had almost 2 years ago. Joining EcoGeek opened up a new world to me and was a huge boon to my green motivation. This did the same but was on a different level. Being around green conscious Seattle-ites just felt right.

Although I still went through my (unfortunately) regular shyness phase, I had a lot of great conversations with some very interesting people. I met a woman who started an organization called DenCity Research to provide green housing to Iraq veterans. The idea came up from an epiphany she had that many Iraq vets come back with a passion for reducing dependence on foreign oil and also many return homeless. I also met a college student promoting Kale as a food (Eat Your Kale) via T-Shirts, a green architect, a software engineer that was looking to move from corporate to green and a chocolatier.

Ahh chocolate. Autumn, the woman I spoke with, really wanted me to blog on EcoGeek about the company she works for but I have yet to think of a way to make it fit with our audience, but hopefully a small shoutout at my humble startup will suffice for now. The company, Theo Chocolate, is the only organic and fair trade chocolate producer in the United States. Impressive, huh? There has been a lot of controversy about cacao beans, the fruit seeds that are the source of chocolate, since often they are harvested with child (slave) labor. Anyway, they sell all across the US and online also. She mentioned that they give many tours, with free samples, so I think I’m going to schedule an excursion with some friends to check it out.

Well, Start Good Mission: Green Drinks went well. I hope it only gets better!

Photo Credit: Gillo via Flickr

My journey towards starting good starts with this blog, but also in my community. This weekend I am going to join Step It Up, as mentioned below and then today I am going to my first Green Drinks. Green Drinks is a casual, group of people that meet once every month to connect with other people in the green industry. The website describes it much better than I can, especially without having gone!

Green Drinks International

Every month people who work in the environmental field meet up for a beer at informal sessions known as Green Drinks.

We have a lively mixture of people from NGOs, academia, government and business. Come along and you’ll be made welcome. Just say, “are you green?” and we will look after you and introduce you to whoever is there.It’s a great way of catching up with people you know and also for making new contacts. Everyone invites someone else along, so there’s always a different crowd, making Green Drinks an organic, self-organising network.

These events are very simple and unstructured, but many people have found employment, made friends, developed new ideas, done deals and had moments of serendipity. It’s a force for the good and we’d like to help it spread to other cities. Contact your local node to get the latest info about coming along.

You can also email edwin [at] greendrinks [dot] org if you want some tips on how to set up Green Drinks in your City.

The one in Seattle is at 6:00PM at 5th and Madison, a new building that was created with sustainability and efficiency in mind. I’m a bit warry because I’m timid around strangers but it should be a good experience regardless.

With Step It Up, I hope I can gain some insight on the pulse of Seattle and climate change this week. Also, I think it will be interesting as I am using Facebook as a tool to get people to go to Step It Up this weekend, we’ll see how successful I am with it. My results will be posted here after the event, along with a review and critique of Greendrinks and a critique of myself!