Green community converges for monthly gathering

At the Mission Village Laundry on a recent Tuesday evening, washing machines weren’t the only things bubbling with suds. Thirty or so people milled about the laundry area drinking beer, wine or another drink of their choice, and socializing with one another. Old friends greeted each other with hugs and newbies introduced themselves to the crowd. They were attending Green Drinks, a monthly gathering of people who either work in the environmental field or simply share concerns about ecological issues. Green Drinks is an international organization with local chapters in 44 countries—and counting. In 2008 alone, 150 new chapters began in cities around the world, bringing the total number of local groups to 437. Ever since it began in the United Kingdom in 1989, Green Drinks has shunned the strict rules of more traditional social clubs. No dues are collected. No oaths are taken. The group’s main Web site calls it an “organic, self-organizing network,” and all that’s asked of participants is that they care about the environment and their community. The Spokane chapter began meeting about a year ago, after local coordinator Alli Riese moved to the Lilac City from Seattle. The Canada native and Gonzaga University Foundation assistant director says she asked herself, “‘Where’s my community? Where does it gather?’ At Green Drinks!” Riese had helped organize a few Green Drinks events in Seattle and decided to start a Spokane chapter, but it took her a year to get the ball rolling. “Occasionally a student from Gonzaga would e-mail and ask what was going on with Green Drinks,” she says. “I’d tell them, ‘Nothing. Will you help me?’” Help finally came along when Cassie Taylor, another Seattle transplant, contacted Riese a year ago. These days, about 30 to 40 people show up at the Green Drinks events and more than 180 are on the group’s mailing list. During its first year, the Spokane Green Drinks gatherings were held at Brooklyn Nights, a bar in downtown Spokane. The group recently decided to start meeting at various businesses and organizations’ offices instead as a way to increase the exposure of local companies and groups. That’s how the group ended up at the Mission Village Laundry in February. Members arrived with dirty clothes in one hand and six packs of beer in the other. Between sips, they rotated comforters from washing machines to dryers and gave out cookies to neighborhood children who were doing laundry with their parents, unaware of the special event being held that night. Riese’s boyfriend, Kent Wales owns Mission Village Laundry and has made green changes since buying it four years ago. In January, Green Drinks was held at Ross Printing Co., another local business that has taken steps toward sustainability. Donations are accepted at the gatherings, with the money going toward a different charity or program each time. In February, attendees dropped donations into a toy washing machine for the Northeast Community Center, which services many of the laundromat’s regular customers. Green Drinks is all about being loose and light hearted. No one stands up during the evening to lecture on the destruction of rain forests or the disappearing habitat of polar bears—although an interest in those issues and other ecological concerns are likely a commonality that binds most attendees. “Many environmental events are information heavy,” Riese says. “With Green Drinks, there’s no charge, no agenda. It’s about those informal connections that make good environmental change happen.” Taylor adds, “The point of Green Drinks is to bring people together.” Taylor, a sustainable-business consultant who does green real estate development, grew up in Spokane and moved to Seattle in 2006. She returned last year and says in that short amount of time she noticed a “radical shift” in Spokanites’ concern over the environment. The scene in February looked like any other cocktail party— or at least a cocktail party with bright lighting, the hum of spin cycles in the background and conversations that often circled back to the topic of sustainability. When Taylor mentioned that she recently bought a diesel-powered Volkswagen Jetta that can get more than 40 miles per gallon, attendee Dave Weber overheard and chimed in with the latest news he’d heard about hydrogen cars. The group was somewhat a who’s who of the local sustainability movement. Attendees included Bruce Gage, who co-owns the green home improvement store Eco Depot, and BrightSpirit Hendrix, who co-owns Fresh Abundance local and organic food market. Pam and Tom Deutschman were attending for the first time. The Deutschmans, concerned that people were becoming socially isolated during the past few decades, began organizing a monthly pancake feed in Polly Judd Park five years ago. That gathering now draws anywhere from 20 to 150 people. “A lot of people come home every night and turn on the TV. That’s their life,” says Tom, who knocks on doors when he sees someone new in his neighborhood. “It’s important that we get to know our neighbors and reach out.” And that’s the point of Green Drinks, too. Taylor says it—and the green movement in general—attracts people of all backgrounds, from the Generation Xers and Yers who might consider the green trend sexy, to people who came of age in the 1960s and have always been socially conscious. “It’s great to get to know people committed to the same things,” Taylor says. “I think community is the key to how social change happens.” The next Green Drinks is 5:30-9 p.m. March 10 at Zola, at 22 W. Main, Spokane. Zola will also create a special drink for the evening and is extending Happy Hour. Enter to win a T-shirt. People can also pay $10 membership special.