Swift Current Green Drinks
Green Drinks Swift Current
What is Green Drinks?
Green Drinks is a once-a-month (on 3rd Tuesday), informal evening of green conversations and networking, with alcoholic (or not) drinks.
It is all-inclusive, with no membership fee or commitment, no agenda, and no selling. Someone will be invited to lead a discussion on a topic of interest per event.
Next one happening: Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Discussion will be lead by Kristy Sletten, owner of Southwest Wind Energy - a wind turbine distribution company based in Hazlet, Saskatchewan. Kristy will be dicussing how she became involved in wind energy and why she believes that it has the potential to create sustainaibility for both large and small power consumers. She looks forward to sharing her passion for wind energy with you.
Location: Louie D's Lounge, 49 Central Ave N
- Start Time: 7:00 pm
- Speaker: 7:30pm for ~15-20 minutes
- Conversations: Til Late
Contact: Caroline Barrington
- Email: caroline@greencaroline.com
- Home: 778-2207
- Cell: 774-8411
Past Green Drinks
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Tim Cox of the City of Swift Current Wastewater Treatment Plant, discussed the processes at our wastewater treatment plant - what happens on the way in, how it's treated, and on the way out. He outlined what happened before the new plant, changes in the effluent quality over the past 6 years, environmental impacts, and future considerations.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Due to unforseen circumstances, our discussion leader was unable to make it! So is rescheduled to March. But we had a couple drinks at the lovely Louie D's and chatted green anyway.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Swift Current Creek Watershed Stewards (SCCWS) Executive Director Arlene Unvoas spoke about the different ways the group works toward maintaining a healthy creek and with clean water including educating residents, working with municipal governments, as well working with childrens groups to educate about creek ecosystems. We learned that our creek is healthy and that there are continually steps being taken to ensure it stays that way.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Local Swift Current resident Don Robinson shared with us the various energy saving features that he decided to build into his new house approximately 5 years ago, including explaining what geothermal heating/cooling is all about. We learned how it works, advantages and disadvantages, comparative costs and more.
Let's Expand our Network
Just go up to someone and ask, "Are you green?". If their answer is "yes", then they are welcome!
Let's get together to make a difference. Come out and communicate, learn, teach, debate, work together and give examples of how to turn sustainable ideas into actual practice.
What is sustainable? It is anything that is good for seven future generations and does not do harm to the present generation.
Share and debate your viewpoints, opinions, and experiences. We want to hear what you have to say. We are much stronger together than apart and alone.
By working together and implementing and/or offering green or sustainable solutions, everyone wins. You as an individual wins, your family wins, your children win, your great grandchildren win, your local community wins and in the end all of humanity wins.
Rules of Green Drinks:
Green Drinks are Open
- Green Drinks is mostly for people working on environmental issues, but anyone can come -- people from environment groups, business, government, academia and as individuals. There is no 'us and them'.
- Organisers and all attendees actively welcome newcomers and introduce them to others in the group.
- All attendees commit to meeting new people at every session and not just sticking with people they already know.
Green Drinks are Freeform
- There is generally no agenda or theme, Green Drinkers mingle and share insights and provoke and exasparate and inspire and delight each other. There are moments of serendipity and a lot of 'oh, you if are interested in X then I must introduce you to that person over there who knows all about it' ...
- All kinds of people come to Green Drinks and this is what makes for the interesting interactions.
Green Drinks are Agenda Free
- Green Drinks is not a channel to circulate announcements or news about environmental issues. Green Drinkers are already deluged with information from thousands of other sources. Green Drinks is a place to go to get away from all that.
- It's OK to have speakers for 20-30 mins or so or to have a theme for the evening to help stimulate discussion, but the bulk of the evening should be freeform and random.
- The host venue itself creates some slant inevitably but must be gracious and open; independent venues such as bars or restaurants are preferred.
- Green Drinks as an entity will never endorse or have a position or stance on an environmental topic.
- There will be no non-Green Drinks-related content or messages or appeals or ads circulated to the city organisers or appearing on the greendrinks.org website.
Green Drinks are Non Profit
- Organisers mostly use free resources and volunteers and donate their own time.
- Voluntary charge at door if necesssary to cover costs; per event only, no membership fee.
- Mostly free to attend, each participant pays for their own drinks and food.
- Incorporation as LLC or Ltd company is OK for larger groups.
- Event sponsors and venue hosts OK as long as freedom of discussion is not compromised.
Green Drinks are Run Responsibly
- Organisers and participants work to create a safe, non threatening environment for all and drink responsibly.
- Organisers niche and collaborate with other Green Drinks in their area.
- Organisers keep their pages on www.greendrinks.org updated with the date and venue of the next Green Drinks and a contact name and email so first-timers have confidence to travel across town and devote an evening to Green Drinks.
- Organisers don't sell their email lists to advertisers.
- Some organisers act as mentors to help and advise other groups.
Green Drinks are Fun
- There is a very informal vibe and overall light feel.
- There are lots of benefits to green drinks; they are hard to quantify, but when you have seen people come and make new links and learn and argue and set up new schemes and get new jobs etc, it is a good feeling.