Greenies swap tips at home eco-parties

Guests learn about composting, how to make laundry soap

By Jason Vondersmith

Pamplin Media Group, Jul 8, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

Jeff Basinger / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

Roger Joys digs into his compost bin to show eco party guests how worms do the trick.

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Portland resident Resa Thomason-Schnacky recently hosted an “eco-party,” where people gather to swap sustainability tips around the home.

She invited eight people to her Southeast Portland home – and 18 showed up.

“People shared ideas; that was the great part,” she says.

Portland environmental activist Jeanne Roy has been training volunteers to do home eco-parties for 15 years.

“The reason these eco-parties work so well is because they’re peer-to-peer kind of motivation,” says Roy, cofounder of Center for Earth Leadership and Northwest Earth Institute. “You hear what others are doing and it motivates you.”

The Home Eco-Party Program now puts on two or three per month, and Roy would like to increase that number.

It works this way: A host expresses interest in putting on a party, and recruits at least 10 people to take part. Each person fills out a checklist about household sustainability issues and questions. Once the party ensues, Roy or one of her volunteers discusses them with the gathered individuals.

Partygoers leave with either a renewed sense of commitment to sustainability, or with education needed to start living a more sustainable home life.

Roy, who also runs the Agent of Change class and Master Recycler program, has put on about 500 eco-parties in the Portland area.

“We find that our eco-parties work well, no matter how much people know,” she says. “If a group is highly conscious, there are still areas they haven’t thought about.”

The checklist includes questions about reducing waste, toxics, conserving energy and water, recycling, composting, reducing packaging and junk mail and eliminating disposables.

Ted Ames of Southwest Portland hosted a party in January, and 20 people took part. He and his wife were motivated after attending a Roy eco-party two years ago.

“If there were more eco-parties, we’d be more sustainable,” Ames says.

Ecology begins at home

Ames has made multiple changes, including installing solar panels on his house.

He saves plastics that can’t go into the weekly recycling bin and takes them to Far West Fibers. “Now I’m a collection point for lids and other plastic packaging” among friends, he says.

Ames changed the kind of soap he uses for laundry, going with a homemade version. He’s starting to buy toilet paper made out of recycled paper.He and his wife have whittled garbage down to one can per month That was easier when they put a composting device in their backyard for food scraps and other organic material. They freeze noncompostable scraps until their monthly garbage pickup.

“None of it’s tedious,” Ames says. “It’s just a matter of remembering; the effort is relatively easy.”

Michelle Lasley of North Portland put on a party in April for eight people. She has another one scheduled for September.

Initially she was reluctant to do an eco-party. “I was afraid somebody would come and do the lecturing thing,” she says. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

The volunteer at the party emphasized doing little things initially.

“I’ve got more confidence in making my own laundry soap,” Lasley adds. “My son helped me make it. He’s 3.”