Many of us will be rushing around this week cleaning our homes and preparing for our Thanksgiving feasts. I would like to suggest a few ways to make the festivities greener for you and your family. The plan is simply: Plan Ahead, not just for this one holiday but for all your celebrations, birthday parties and BBQs.

Instead of rushing around to purchase paper plates, styrofoam cups and plastic forks, invest in a couple sets of dinnerware and flatware. If your party is really large, call ahead to rent dishes. You have to admit your special turkey and dressing tastes much better on real dishes. And yes, washing the extra dishes does take a little more time, but consider the energy it takes to make that paper plate. One must build a road, cut down a tree, haul it to a mill, chip and cook it with caustic chemicals, make the paper that is transported to a factory that makes the plates Which are packaged in plastic bags to be delivered to a central warehouse and sent to your favorite store which you drive to and purchase for a single use. The used plates now go into your garbage that is picked up by a truck which dumps it at our transfer station to be loaded into larger trucks that haul it back through Vallejo on its way to Contra Costa County to the Keller Canyon Landfill to be buried forever. Not to pick on paper plates; everything that we use, whether it is one-use disposables or items purchased to last a lifetime, incur these manufacturing expenses. Now, what do you do with your supply of disposable dinnerware? May I suggest that you donate it to the Christian Help Center (2166 Sacramento St. 707 553-8192). They don't use regular dinnerware for health reasons and they will accept excess food from your party (call for details).

To help you plan your holiday party, I've updated our Green Party Planner. It will be on our web site or you can call VALCORE and ask for a copy. On a lighter side, one of my standard kitchen tools is aluminum foil, especially the new non-stick version. One Thanksgiving morning in the early 1940's, the wife of a Reynolds executive asked him to buy a large turkey roasting pan. Figuring that he had little chance finding one on a holiday, he offered her some aluminum foil that he happened to have in his briefcase. The make-shift roasting pan worked.

Reynolds Metals complemented its World War II military work with experiments in household uses of aluminum. Aluminum foil was pressed by rollers to become thin enough to tear and fold like paper but strong and capable of holding shape. In 1947 the company introduced Reynolds Wrap and the rest is history.

C&D Update
I have another Construction and Demolition (C&D) Recycling company to add to my last column. The Napa Recycling & Composting Facility is located at 820 Levitin Road, (next to the Devlin Road Transfer Station in American Canyon). They accept the following C&D material daily from 8 am to 4 pm: yardwaste, unpainted wood and pallets, concrete, clean dirt, and scrap metal. They sell compost and top soil. Kevin Miller, Napa's Materials Diversion Administrator, has assured me that they have the lowest fees in the area. For more information call Greg Kelly at 707 255-5200 or Kevin Miller at 707 257-9200.

Local WRAPPERS
Congratulations are in order to Solano County's 2005 WRAP (Waste Reduction Awards Program) winners. Vallejo had three new participants this year: Paul Roberts + Partners (Architects), Vallejo Insurance Associates, and Vallejo Chamber of Commerce joined ranks with Vallejo Garbage Service and VALCORE Recycling. Other winners included Anheuser-Busch in Fairfield, Genentech in Vacaville, and county-wide: Safeway and Save Mart. My hat is off to all of you.