There are a lot of un-sung heroes in the fight to protect our planet. Each month green is sexy will shine a spotlight on one (using a CFL bulb, of course!).

For December, we caught up with Cori and Aviva, creators of The Adventure School, a event planning company in Seattle, WA, for the scoop on Adventuring and some hot green party planning trips.

How did you start The Adventure School and what is it?
The Adventure School is an event planning company. It is also a lifestyle; we are adventurers who hope to be inducted into the Explorers Club one day.

How long have you been around and what is your mission
We have been Adventuring in an official capacity since Autumn 2006. We met at Oktoberfest in Munich in the year 2003 and the next day took a midnight bus to Croatia and the adventuring never stopped. All in all, The Adventure School founders are born adventurers (circa, winter 1980). Our mission is to create immersive adventure environments.

Wow! Tell us a little about yourselves
We believe in adventure.

Aviva: I grew up in Sacramento, California. I studied Sociology at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I studied abroad in Mongolia. In Mongolia, we had no trash service or landfills and created almost no waste. My host family and our neighbors practiced subsistent living. I moved to Seattle from San Francisco after traveling around the world for one year to work on the 2004 presidential campaign and to write a thinly fictionalized children’s book about using games to connect with people around the world. I think creativity, celebration, and responsible business practice all bring change to my communities. I am committed to changing the world for the better all the time.

Cori: I grew up in Redmond, Washington on a farm surrounded by expensive tract housing and McMansions. I was granted the rare opportunity as a young child to learn at home about living off of the land while at the same time observing suburban sprawl and waste. When our water well started to go dry we learned how to conserve water and since we did not get a trash service we always conserved and composted. I went to college in Bellingham and majored in Post-Colonial Literature. I have traveled extensively in the Caribbean and Europe. I worked in the nonprofit sector after college. I strongly believe in downtown living. I never want to have a house with a yard. I would rather live in a dense downtown core where I can get everything I want right around my living space.

Tell us a bit about your favorite event you’ve planned.
Our favorite event so far was our most recent event, Crawl Space Bazaar. This party was the second annual fundraiser we created for Seattle’s Crawl Space Artist-Run Gallery. This party let our imagination run wild, revolving around a hot pink floor, handmade chandeliers, sequined balls, feathers, bright colors and dance mania. We asked people to dress to Razzle Dazzle. And they did, while Burlesque dancers tray passed all of the locally made foods. We used no dishes and the décor components were all gathered for around $200, all of it will be reused at parties and in our homes this holiday season.

What is the secret of being so cool?
We are completely out of control. We will sleep in airports in the name of adventure. We will starve for adventure and we will stay up all night for adventure. We believe in Adventure as a way of daily life. Owning a business is an adventure, our personal relationships are adventures, planning our parties is an adventure and attending our parties is an adventure.

Just in time for the holidays, can you recommend some green party planning tips?
Green is often cheaper. We have discovered many of our green practices when we are attempting to save money and that is the biggest tip we have for you!

Other than that we predicate all of our green practies on the following easy always be green principles: REUSE, REPURPOSE, REINVENT, REDUCE.

REUSE
1. Shop at thrift shops
2. Borrow things
3. Freecycle, garage sale, Craigslist; there is a lot more life in most things that people are getting rid of
4. Compost food, paper, and eco-disposables
5. Use compostable décor like pumpkins, squash, gourds, leaves, sticks and other foliage
6. Decorate with bones and horns that you find in the woods
7. Discovering Freecycling things such as:

Boomboxes

Office supplies like a file cabinet, file folders, hanging folders

Put decoration supplies you have up for someone else.

We threw a beach themed party with a lot of sand and then freecycled the sand which was then used for a walkway at someone else’s home in the neighborhood

We got 40 free wineglasses from people remodeling their kitchen and making more room in their cupboard and used them for a birthday feast

Old buoys that aren’t for the sea anymore are perfect for a party

REPURPOSE
1. Turn a stick into coral
2. Turn a pumpkin into a bowl
3. Turn a piece of firewood into a sign
4. Collect sticks on private property in the woods for décor and hang crystals from an old chandelier on them
5. Turn feathers, ribbon and a hula hoop into a chandelier

REINVENT
There is no scarcity of ideas. If you think of an idea that will waste resources, think of a way to make it reuse resources or just think of another idea! If you think creatively, you never need to buy things that are pre-made.

1. Who said weddings need flowers?
2. You can create a party that doesn’t require throwing away one thing!
3. Paint stuff you already have to enhance your theme
4. Purchase old dishware and make new glamorous sets of mismatched gear

REDUCE
1. Set yourself up at the beginning of the party to not dispose of things when it is over and you are tired
2. Use reusable bins to transport your stuff, you will be less likely to throw things away if you can pack it up easily and bring it home.
3. If you limit meat and dairy at your parties, everything will be compostable
4. Just go without plates, finger food ahoy!
5. Make and label appropriate bins: recycle, compost, trash, so your guests can do some of the earth-saving work
6. Use local
7. Consider the embodied energy of everything you use
9. Make things by hand, don’t buy pre-made junk
10. Use regional wine
11. Serve raw foods

Great ideas - now what’s in store for The Adventure School this party planning season?
This holiday season, we challenge ourselves to use only one bag of trash per party. We will continue our usual aim to use less trash at our parties than our guests would collectively at home.

We believe that our business practices AND our party practices need to be green. We’ve talked a lot about our green party practices and we keep the enviro-ball rolling all work day long as well.

We think of parties, events and celebrations as a way to be creative, stylish and community oriented. People think of parties as being wasteful while in fact there is no need to sacrifice style for an eco-friendly party. Call on The Adventure School for awesome eco-parties wherever you are all around the world. We will be there with more bang for you buck and green solutions to spare.

Ready to step up greening your holidays? Use the recipes below, courtest of The Adventure School, and challenge yourself to keep it green this holiday season.

	CHALLENGE: I am not going to use new wrapping paper this year! How-to Ideas: Cut out the bottom of paper bags and use the blank side to print on to make patterned wrapping paper. Make a bunch at once and roll it up on a tube. Have a wrapping paper making party. Ask people to bring all sorts of papers. Use: Fabric scraps, Color comics in the newspapers, smut mags, or maps.
	CHALLENGE: Have a holiday party that produces only one bag of trash! How-to Ideas: • Host a potluck and insist people bring reusable containers • Get a keg and use your everyday glassware or mason jars (no booze bottles, beer cans or cups to trash) • Use real plates and silverware • Use all compostable decorations. Winter holidays are all about natural resources—forage and then compost! Include: Cranberries, popcorn, sticks, boughs, trees.
	CHALLENGE: Make party details everybody will admire and remember out of once used materials or materials you will personally re-use. Details such as place cards, invitations, and centerpieces will make your party something magical. How-to Ideas: Place Cards: • Name card in a bowl of cranberries. • String name cards on popcorn and cranberry strings. String them on tiny trees on the table or from the wine glass to the water glass • Attach names to foraged pinecones. • Make a snowglobe for each guest. Collect old jars, fill the jars with water and white glitter. Hot glue a crystal, pretty rock, glass ornament or any other water-proof thrifted trinket or toy to the inside of the jar top. Put a ring of hot glue onto the outer ring of the jar top right before you screw the top on. Now when you put the jar upside down it should look like a snow globe. Use a permanent marker to write each guest’s names onto one of the snow globes. • Screen print each person’s name onto a mug. Use this mug for serving applecider or mulled wine. Use new or used mugs. Invitations: • Sew fabric scraps to make envelopes. Include an invite, and pine needles inside. • Make invitations that match your homemade wrapping paper • Send each guest a used book, write all of the party invitation information into the front of the book or on a bookmark placed in the front of the book. Ask guests to bring a book for a gift exchange. Centerpieces: • Use a real plant that you will keep year-round • Bring in foliage • Make a moss table runner • Paint tumbleweed, manzanita or whatever gnarly plant is local to your area white. Hang it over the center of the table. Greeting/outdoor décor. • Title your party and then paint the title onto a piece of thin wood, put it on your front porch. We recently did a party and called it “Mossy Wonderland” • Make birdfeeders out of pinecones, peanut butter and birdseed. Hang them in a fanciful arrangement using colored string. • Remove the inside of winter squash and carve one number of your address or one letter of Welcome into each squash. Light with a candle a la pumpkin jack-o-lanterns.

Learn more about The Adventure School by visiting them on their website.

Photographs courtesy of the The Adventure School