If you love to hold parties and entertain yet are also worried about the amount of waste that often comes as a result of these events, you’ll be happy to know that there are plenty of steps you can take to keep enjoying the company of others without filling garbage bag after garbage bag with paper and plastic materials once the party is over.
To help you see exactly how this can be done, here are three tips for more sustainable entertaining.
Go Paperless
One of the best ways to be more sustainable with your entertaining is to make it as paperless of an experience as possible.
While this can be done by using real plates and cloth napkins as opposed to the single-use variety, you can also use far less paper by choosing to send out evites rather than paper invitations. When you send out evites, Lauren Levy, a contributor to Brides.com, shares that not only are you using paper for your invitations, but you’re also having to use paper for the envelopes that you send the invitations out in and the stamps that you use to have those invitations mailed. But when you send out evite invitations, there is no paper used and no trees harmed.
Use Compostable Materials
For smaller gatherings, it’s not a big deal to use real plates and flatware. The cleanup can be easy enough and you likely don’t have to rent, borrow, or buy any additional items. But when you’re entertaining a big group of people, the ease and conveniences of single-use items can be appealing.
To get the best of both worlds here, you should look for compostable materials that come in the single-use form. This way, once your event is over, you can compost everything together and further help feed the planet rather than just throwing away plastic utensils. And you won’t even have to worry about a big cleanup project, either.
Be Smart About Getting Drinks
The drinks at an event or gathering can also create a sustainability issue. For many parties, it makes sense for everyone to have their own single serving of a drink. However, this can also create a lot of waste, especially if you’re serving drinks in plastic bottles or cups.
To avoid this, Allison Beck, a contributor to The Daily Meal, suggests using pitchers or other larger containers meant for beverages to serve your guests in actual glassware. By doing this, you won’t be purchasing a huge number of plastic bottles for drinks and you’ll be able to reuse both the serving pitchers and the drinking glasses for additional events.
If you’re wanting to continue entertaining without creating so much waste once you’re done, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find some simple solutions.
