Confession and brainstorming time! As we celebrated the 4th, I definitely had some cringe-factor about how much plastic waste we generated. Between disposable silverware, plastic packaging for food/drinks and extra trash bags I would love to brainstorm about how to do better for next time. Doing this challenge definitely made me re-think lots of stuff and we did reduce our overall plastic waste from last year. I'm gonna take the win and plan to do more next time! Anyone have suggestions?
Some things I would like to do differently for next party:
Find biodegradable silverware I can have on hand for easy use. I was debating getting a 'party set' of silverware like we do cups, but just don't think it would be great long term. I can also bring the biodegradable stuff into the zoo to compost after.
-Plan ahead to recycle cans and reduce plastic bottle use. I went for mostly can drinks for this party, but had margarita mix I bought that could have been made with less plastic use (and fresher!). I also think if I get all the cans together we could make a bit of money that could be donated back to an organization to try to compensate for our increased waste.
-Encourage guests to think about plastic use. Something I meant to do before the party, was to send out a post reminding people to reduce their plastic. We had a lot of people bringing items in plastic bags or using non-reusable water bottles. For my next party, I want to send out a message reminding people to bring a reusable water bottle and use their reusable bags. To help make it fun, I want to do a 'crazy cup' party where people bring a fun cup of their own to make people think a bit about their disposable use.
-Have trash containers without bags. It would have been really easy to just not put bags in our trash containers for the party. It requires a bit more effort and clean-up, but would have been an easy way to reduce a lot of plastic waste.
Some positive things I did differently from last year:
-Reused all our decorations. We are going on 3 years with the same decorations so I was really tempted to get some new stuff. Especially since these things are only used one month out of the year, I want to get as much use of them as possible. Plus, a lot of the items have plastic packaging as well as are made of plastic. I'm gonna look for some sales with natural fiber decorations to put aside for next year and make sure to take care of our current decorations to make them last longer.
-Reusable cups! After the 4th last year we stocked up on washable cups. We had enough for the majority of our guests this year and I only saw a couple solo cups being used. I tried to snag those before they went in the garbage to wash and re-use. We also didn't give out straws, but I did have a couple paper ones I got to have on hand in case people did want one.
-Kept packaging to put uneaten food back in and used re-usable containers for leftovers. I usually will dump chips into bowls and toss the bags and just put things back into ziplocks to keep things fresher. This year, I made sure to save all the bags and put the leftovers back into their original containers with clips for storage. For things like our potato salad and watermelon, we used tupperware.
