dvGreen designs sustainable events without sacrificing style. They show clients that they can reduce their ecological footprint while still throwing a beautiful party - one that just happens to be Green. By featuring organic food, flowers, and table linens; tree-free paper invitations; donating or composting leftover food; purchasing carbon offsets, and more, dvGreen creates incredible events that you can be proud of forever.

Danielle, founder and CEO of dvGreen spent several years as Event Director and later General Manager of L’Olivier, one of New York’s premiere floral design houses. The driving force in Danielle’s event work has always been her belief that parties are important. They are essential celebrations of life that allow us to freeze time and honor meaningful milestones. If we don’t mark these moments, then they risk going away forever.

It is this belief, coupled with Danielle’s very parallel feeling about the environment (if we don’t take care of it, the planet as we know it will also go away forever), that led her to launch dvGreen in 2006, a company that combines excellence in event design with the latest in sustainable practices.

Here’s is some great advice from dvGreen on how to go green for your next event.

Regardless of what goes in the bowl these new biodegradable pet bowls from QuickPoint are sure to be a hit with any Ecopreneurist focusing on our four legged friends.

A Peruvian company that makes beer from coca leaves now has plans to export its product to countries like China, Venezuela, and South Africa.

The company making the beer is a supporter of the National Confederation of Coca Farmers, a group that advocates for more organized production of coca plants. The beer is named Apu, and is already sold in southeastern cities of Peru like Cusco, the well-known gateway city to legendary Machu Picchu.

But wait… don’t draw any conclusions yet. According to the source of this information, the online news source Living in Peru, spokespeople for the group say “The goal is to demonstrate that coca leaves are not cocaine…the plant should be industrialized to avoid the production of cocaine.”

St. Patrick’s Day is just a week away. Let’s celebrate with some real green beer!

Americans age 21 and older go through about 5 pints of beer per week. That adds up to over 30 gallons of beer per year! We spend $4 billion dollars on beer just on St. Patrick’s Day alone. That is a lot of beer! Imagine the difference it would make if we stuck to brews from these folks, who are doing their best to produce a low-impact, tasty pint?

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and E-Fuel Corp have joined forces to create a high-grade, inexpensive ethanol fuel.

They plan to make fuel from discarded beer yeast using the Efuel 100 MicroFueler. The first-ever home ethanol systems will be housed at the brewery in Chico, California.

With the ever increasing number of craft brews hitting shelves in recent years, choosing an ale can be a difficult decision. Each crafty label seems coded somehow to project the underlying character traits of the person indulging. Unibroue, for swarthy Francophiles. Brooklyn, for the hip crowd harkening their home borrough. New Belgium for outdoorsy sorts who prefer to pedal and paddle. And Full Sail, for those beer enthusiasts who are simply paying attention.

This week, Oregon’s Full Sail Brewing Company received the Governor’s Sustainability Award for small business in recognition of the company’s ever increasing commitment to the community and the environment.

Investigations at the University of Porto show that marinating beef in red wine or beer may reduce the levels of potentially cancer-promoting compounds in cooked meat.

Using beer or red wine marinades reduced the level of heterocyclic amines in pan fried beef by up to 88 per cent. Heterocyclic amines, formed during the browning of meat and fish, are reported to promote carcinogenesis in humans. So marinading possibly has the [...]

New Belgium Brewing Company already topped lists of sustainable beers.  Its reputation and practices earned Chief Branding Officer Greg Owsley a talk at last June’s Sustainable Brands Conference.  And now, the Colorado-based company has released its first sustainability report, which includes a life cycle analysis of a Fat Tire six-pack.

Triple Bottom Line

New Belgium’s sustainability report highlights what sustainable businesses call their “triple bottom line” - people, planets, and profits.  With companies from different sectors starting to embrace sustainability (e.g., Toyota and GE), New Belgium’s market share success provides more evidence for green business as good business.  The new report describes New Belgium’s ongoing and planned environmental and social initiatives, including renewable energy use, green building design, increased brewing efficiency, and a philanthropic bike festival (Tour de Fat).

Colleges have always been a primary point of rally for green initiatives.  Now, a threat to malting barley has created a new call for support as the price and availability of beer is being threatened by climate change according to a study conducted and released in 2008.

The potential for the alcohol industry to be effected by climate change has been a concern for some time, but it is hitting a feverish pitch and garnering support and calls to action from campuses across the country.  In Lawrence, Kansas, Greenpeace volunteers held a recruitment event called “Save the Ales” earlier this week to tackle how global warming effects college drinking.

Hydrogen fuel cells have long been hailed as the next big thing to replace petroleum in cars, but there is one major problem: hydrogen is usually produced from fossil fuels. Fortunately, a multitude of companies are looking at alternative hydrogen sources— including sewage and dough.

My apologies for what seems like a blatant advertisement for New Belgium Brewery, but after seeing the Fort Collins, Colorado microbrewery’s latest coaster/postcard, I couldn’t resist snapping these photos and posting them for you. New Belgium is known for not only its excellent beers, but also for its progressive social and environmental policies, and its quirky advertisements - as is evidenced by the following photos: