Daily Decisions: Party time

Throughout 2013, Adding Light will take a look at practical decisions that everyone can take to contribute to making our communities more ecologically and economically resilient. Everything in this Daily Decisions comes from experience or research applied directly by our family or people we know directly.

This past weekend, we hosted an energy efficiency house "warming" party. I will discuss the results of that in greater detail another time, but for today, I want to focus on the party aspect of it, and the decisions we made to reduce waste and focus on the local community.

Local business

My wife and I focused first on identifying where we could obtain the items on our desired menu from a local business. Because of some circumstances around our house last week, preparing all the food ourselves was out of the question, so we picked a menu of desirable food that we could obtain locally. Pre-made sandwiches from our local Italian foods grocer (Calabria Imports on 103rd Street), cookies from a local bakery (Beverly Bakery on Western Avenue), and dips made on site at our local grocer (County Fair) rounded out the menu, and provided both variety and flavor.

Waste reduction

In order to minimize how much we threw into the "landfill can", we made a couple of decisions. First, we used washable plates and cups for serving and consuming the food and drink. About fifteen total people came by during the party, so I grant that the numbers made this easy, but depending on the frequency of your hosting, and your access to party supply stores, any host can make this happen. In addition, we used cloth napkins instead of paper. Secondly, we made sure the menu consisted of easy-to-store-and-eat-later items. We ate the leftover sandwiches for dinner on Sunday, and have a couple of more to pack into lunches this week. We put the chips and dips out in phases so that we would have any leftovers stored adequately. You might guess that we have no leftover cookies to handle. The only waste products from the event related to food consisted of the cardboard box the sandwiches came in, the bottles from beer we had purchased, and the wrappers/bags from the sandwiches and chips. Of this, only four Styrofoam boats that held the sandwiches and the plastic wrap that covered them had to go into the "landfill can". (With NYC considering a ban on Styrofoam, we hope to convince our local food businesses to move away from Styrofoam in favor of other products that will provide the same function but avoid the landfill.)

Clean-up

Although this covers more about the economics than the impact, when we did run the dishwasher to complete the clean-up task, we waited until the price reached a low point. We purchase our electricity in real time, with the price varying by the hour. When prices reach a low point, we know that the electricity likely came from a nuclear source. Although eliminating nuclear sources of energy should stand as a priority for all of us, it does come after eliminating coal, natural gas, and oil. For now, it provides the best option. (We do purchase renewable energy credits to supplant the nuclear with renewable resources, at least contractually. As my brother notes, this is akin to purchasing indulgences, so it only serves as a stopgap until better community energy strategies can be implemented.)

Gatherings of all size and style strengthen our lives by bringing people together and creating social bonds and social capital that enrich our lives. When we host these events, we should make sure that we do not directly or indirectly reduce the quality of life of another to enrich ourselves. There are simple steps that we can follow to still maximize our enjoyment while remaining conscious of others.