Oktoberfest with Green Drinks Bozeman, MT

Green Drinks is a great example of living the environmental professional lifestyle. It is a group of people who work in the environmental field that meet monthly for a happy-hour style gathering of food, drinks, and conversation. The environment of beer (or other drinks) is just the thing this blog is all about. In their own words, Green Drinks includes a lively mixture of people from NGOs, businesses, academia, government and the local community across political and economic spectra who enjoy the opportunity to chat and network under a broad umbrella.

There are Green Drinks group all over the world: Australia, India, China, throughout Europe, cities across the USA, etc. Despite such a wide reach, I hadn’t heard of it until I was invited to a Green Drinks event. I’m not from Bozeman, but was in town and a friend of mine invited me. It was their Oktoberfest event hosted at Intrinsik Architecture and co-hosted by The Trust For Public Land. They were promoting their project for Story Mill Community Park. Because it was Oktoberfest, there was plenty of German-style food and beers from Bar 3 Brewing. Their Oktoberfest marzen is very good.

The number and variety of people there impressed me. Although I did expect to meet more people working directly in the environmental field. Beyond meeting the hosts, I met engineers, other architects, and people working on wetland-stream restoration, small business support and development, transportation, construction, and policy. The introductions and conversations often started with the environment, but quickly branched to travel, art, and college football. (It is October.) I guess the variety of people is the idea. It’s not only environmental professionals. It’s like-minded people in professions that are interconnected to environmental ideals.

Although I’m not from Bozeman, I have passed through several times a year for the last decade. I knew it was a fun town. Now I have a better connection to the Bozeman environmental community. It’s time to check out my local Green Drinks group as well as the other places I travel. Have you been to a Green Drinks event around the world? What did you get out of it?