Remember those old plastic or spiral bound cookbooks with Grandmother’s church ladies’ association name on the front? Collections of recipes are coming back into style, and you can easily host a green fundraiser by making a collection of the best and tastiest recipes your community cooks have to offer.

Step one is the legwork - if you can, make the rounds of the senior centers and visit the shut ins and relatives of your group who lived in the time before the microwave oven. They will love the company, and you can collect some special secret recipes sure to please! Call your Aunt Daisy upstate, and get her famous jelly roll recipe, and find out once and for all what Grandpa puts on his ribs to make them taste so good.

If you can get a company to donate enough recycled paper to print all of your cookbooks on, it will go a long way to making your project as green as it can be! Ask a local print shop to let you make your copies on a few of their machines, and get an office supply to donate the binding materials.

Once you have gotten all the recipes collected, volunteers can be assigned to type them up, make copies and bind the finished volumes. Next you can plan to serve samples of the different dishes at an event - if you have a bake sale panned or just want to set up in a parking lot corner in a high traffic area you can give away sample tastes and sell your cookbook!

Let friends, family and anyone else you can find know about the cookbook, and think about leaving several copies in local mom and pop stores by the counter - most small store owners won’t mind selling a few for you, and it’s a great way to get publicity! Post a note on community message boards, letting them know about the recipe collection, and have a few contact numbers or an email address they can use to order them online as well.

Your little green cookbook can have a cover with your groups logo, and a reminder to live green and be environmentally responsible on the back. Since the fundraiser item is made from recycled and recyclable materials, It definitely qualifies as green, and you can feel good that Great Aunt Ethel’s cinnamon bun recipe will live on forever!