Active Lifestyle

This weekend Your Daily Thread threw an exciting Earth Day Awareness celebration over at the only LEED certified gas station in southern California, BP’s Helios House.  The night time Earth Day event was produced by Sarah Shewey of Pink Cloud Events and brought together an eccletic group from the eco-curious to the eco-warrior in order to bring attention to the various community events that will be taking place during the month of April (check back tomorrow in our green living section for the complete calendar listings.)  If you weren’t able to make it, we will have photographs up by mid week.  You can also find a link to our party information and a few photos and videos here.

If the thought of celebrating Earth Month inspires you to throw your own party check out our tips below:

FOOD: Most parties need them in order to keep your guests to stay longer.  Whether your cooking, hiring catering, or ordering in look to serve food from local and organically grown ingredients.  An even better option is to serve a completely vegetarian or vegan option.  This allows you to compost any of the food scraps or extra waste that the food will create.  Locally we recommend Real Food Daily and Le Pain Quotidien who were also at our event.

DRINKS: Not everyone does, but it’s usually a fun idea to offer them to your guests.  Locally brewed organic beer is always a great choice.  If that is too hard to find than New Belgium Brewery (based out of Colorado) offers sustainably brewed beers.  The company is completely employee owned and was the first brewery to use  wind power.  You can check out their complete sustainability report here.  If spirits are more your thing than check out the Acai (pronounced ah-SIGH-ee) berry based spirit VeeV.  VeeV is a clear spirit, sort of like vodka but much smoother.  The Acai berry is only grown in the rain forests in Brazil and is also considered to be the world’s preeminent super fruit and is packed with 57% more antioxidents than blueberries.  VeeV also donates $1 back to the rain forrest (that their product comes from) to the Sambazon Sustainable Acai Project for every bottle that is sold. You can read more about their complete commitment to the environment here. It’s always important to offer non alcoholic choices as well.  Your Daily Thread was proud to serve organic and fair trade Honest Tea and filtered water from Pure Water Technology. No matter what beverages you serve be sure to recycle bottles and cans and use compostable cups whenever possible.

ACTIVITY: It’s important to have an activity for your guests to do.  ydt was proud to secure organic tees from Article 1, SOS Texas and Econscious and partner with Fresh-Pressed and Matsui Eco Series Water Based ink to premiere the first ever live eco friendly silk screening.  Normally live silk screening is made with inks that are chemically dervived and not eco friendly.  We were really excited to showcase an example of how determination and creativity can infact allow you to do things a little bit better for the environment.  Fresh-Pressed can come to your event (big or small) and you too can have your owned organic tees with eco-friendly silk screening.  Photo booths are another popular touch.  The Polite in Pulic Photo Booth was a big hit at our event.  We chose an “Earth” themed background and guests were photographed with their fiercest (but environmentally friendly) poses.  All photographs are taken digitally and you can access your photos online too.

EARTH INCENTIVES:  ydt promoted biking, walking, public transportation and ride sharing for guests attending the event.  We partnered with Ride Amigos to connect individuals coming from the same areas to “carpool” together to our event.  We also partnered with Schwinn bicycles to give away a Madison Road Bike for one lucky guest that used one of these forms of alternative transportation.  We also partnered with TreePeople to donate the funds from our “Green Date” auction (stay tunned for more on how to Green Date in L.A. soon.)

ECO-FRIENDLY VENUE: We were lucky that our venue at BP’s Helios House is completely LEED Certified.  If you don’t have a LEED Certified location, do a quick evaluation on how you can make it more eco-friendly.  Whether it is changing out the light bulbs to CFLs, using bio bags, or monitoring your energy uses, there are simple ways to make sure that your event is having as minimial of an impact as possible.

We hope these tips can help you through an amazing eco-friendly Earth Day Celebration.  Of course if you want to throw a big bash, definitely contact Sarah Shewey to help you get the party going.

ydt would also like to thank all of our partners, sponsors, amazing djs and supporters at our Earth Day event.

Happy Earth Month!

xoxo,
ydt Team

Tags: BP's Helios House, Earth Day Party, Green Events, Green LA, Pink Cloud Events, Your Daily Thread