Make your party a green one
by Rebecca Klein
Whether you’re planning a big birthday bash, a small sleepover, or a formal family reunion, there are easy steps you can take to make your fete earth friendly. We turned to Cate Buscher of Plan It Perfect, a Baltimore based special events company offering green party planning, for some suggestions.
INVITATIONS:
• Send invitations online with a service such as Evite.
• For paper invitations: use 100 percent recycled paper processed without chlorine
or tree-free paper. Remind guests to recycle the invitations.
• Send plantable invitations with embedded seeds and treat your guests to future
blooms.
FOOD & BEVERAGES:
• Serve locally grown, organic food.
• Use real dishes and flatware along with cloth linens. For events such as kids’ birthday
parties, where disposable items may be easiest, look for biodegradable and
compostable dishes and flatware.
• Instead of individual water bottles, serve tap or filtered water in a pitcher. If you’re
serving soda, use larger bottles instead of individual cans.
• Recycle bottles and cans.
• Donate extra food to a homeless shelter or a food bank.
DECORATIONS:
• For larger events with floral decorations, work with florists using organic flowers
without floral foam.
• Buy locally grown flowers. This reduces the resulting emissions from transporting
exotic flowers across the country.
ENTERTAINMENT:
• Consider a magician or an acoustic performer. Neither requires electricity.
• To minimize electricity, be your own DJ. Make an I-pod mix.
FAVORS:
• Send your guests home with an edible favor such as organic chocolate.
• Instead of goody bags for kids’ birthday parties filled with items that will be trashed,
consider giving out seeds and mini pots for kids to take home and plant with the help
of an adult; another option is a craft to make at the party or at home.
• Send guests at a baby shower or another special event home with a tree in a box kit.
• In lieu of favors, make a donation to an environmental organization or charity in honor
of your guests or plant a tree in their names.
TRANSPORTATION:
• If you’re hosting the event outside your home, keep it as close as possible to
where the majority of your guests live.
• For destination events, where most people are traveling from one general location
to another, consider a shuttle.
• Encourage carpooling when possible.
• For more formal events, where many guests are coming from out of town and staying
at one hotel, the most eco-friendly location for your party is right at the hotel.
For more information on Plan It Perfect, visit www.planitperfectevents.com.
