My good friend (and playfully mischievous rogue), Stacey Champion has held a monthly green related meet-up in and around downtown Phoenix for the past year called Rogue Green.

Stacey was sick of driving 20+ miles to unsustainable resorts on the fringes of Phoenix for the officially sanction ‘Green Drink’ networking gatherings. So she decided to do the truly sustainable thing and hold events at local businesses in her own part of the city, realizing that there were a lot of green minded people whose chose to live nearby.

To me, Rogue Green is a true example of sustainability as it meets the triple bottom line:

1. People: It strengthens ties within the central Phoenix community.
2. Planet: It allows people to gather at centrally located places easily accessible by transit. minimizing driving.
3. Profit: It supports small and local businesses.

While I’m only ‘incidentally green’ due to my interest in urbanism, I started going as it was a way to celebrate the virtues of living an urban lifestyle and promoting cool CenPho businesses at the same time.

After taking a summer hiatus, Stacey has really upped the ante with her fall events.  In addition to hanging out at cool locations and meeting fascinating people, she has started featuring interesting videos and speakers.

This month’s event is a perfect case in point.  From the Rogue Green blog:

November Rogue Green will bring us back to one of my favorite downtown Phoenix hang-outs – THE DUCE! With nothing like it in the city, Steve & Andi Rosenstein, the Duce owners, are a breath of fresh air for downtown Phoenix warehouse district with their visionary space, Midwestern work ethic and love for sustainability and values-driven business. These are people who know how to walk their talk.

This venue will serve as the perfect backdrop for our very exciting November event – a special presentation by my friend and colleague, green architect and best-selling author, Eric Corey Freed.

After seeing Eric’s new keynote presentation, “Spills, Sins and Starbucks: How Oil Has Negatively Altered Our Built Environment” at 2010 West Coast Green in San Francisco, I knew I needed to bring him and his insightful talk to Phoenix.

This will be a great chance to be in an intimate atmosphere with some of the best forward thinkers around.

The event is free to attend, but we will be collecting donations for our “For the Love of Bundt” fundraiser which took place last month, as we are still about $1000 shy from our goal.

The Duce is offering a special 15% discount on purchases from R&R Surplus on the evening of the event to help contribute to “For the Love of Bundt” as well. Time to stock up on Champion gear & warm hoodies!

I look forward to seeing you there!

Msss. Champion

You can find more information on the Rogue Green blog or Facebook page.

I hope to see you there!