Tribe, what comes to your mind first when you hear words like festivals, parties, and celebrations? ‘Coming together to spread joy’, right? In almost all the cultures around the world, that’s what is in the heart of any celebration and festivals; be it birthday parties, social events, or cultural or religious festivals. Of course, in the past few decades, celebrations and festivals have another angle, economy, and related consumption! But we can not just keep consuming our way through everything, we need to mindful of our health and wellness and for our planet’s.
So here I am bringing you a complete guidebook to make any celebration, festival, or parties more eco-friendly.
CELEBRATION VENUE
Now when we are talking about celebrations in general, it could be a simple party organized for the family at home or it could be a grand celebration of one’s wedding so obviously your venue decision depends on a lot of factors for example venue capacity. However, to keep your celebration eco-friendly here are a few factors to consider. Select a venue as close to public transport possible, where you will also have a few basic amenities to avoid any inconveniences. You guest can arrive using public transport and for last-minute running, you can just quickly go to the supermarket next door. This way you will reduce the use of cars and reduce carbon emissions.
Also, try to choose the venue with as much natural setting possible. If you are hosting a celebration at home it could be in your backyard, terrace, in your private outdoor space. If it’s somewhere outside why not select a park or a beach, basically as close to nature possible. That way, you don’t need to worry about decorating much, the views will take care of it. Plus your guest will have a unique experience of your celebration, more memories, less stuff! Here is a great example of such a celebration, when we celebrated our son’s birthday with a farm-themed birthday party with real farm animals in Dubai.
If you are hosting a celebration on the beach read our eco-friendly beach party post for inspiration and earth-friendly tips.
CELEBRATION DECORATIONS
No celebration is complete without its decorations. If it’s a birthday party, there need to be decorations, if it’s a traditional or religious festival, there needs to be appropriate decorations. How can you celebrate Christmas without Christmas tree or Diwali without lamps or Eid without lanterns? But you can definitely choose natural or eco-friendly decorations to reduce waste and pollutions which happens after the celebration.
Sometimes especially for parties, the decorations are decided according to the theme of the party. In that case, better to choose a party theme which allows you to choose natural decorations. Here is our complete guide to throwing sustainable birthday parties, which will give you more ideas about themes and decorations.
The first preference should be flowers, leaves, or confetti made from leaves, petals, etc. which you can compost afterward. You can also invest in recycled decorations or decor that is made from a natural material like fabric bunting instead of the glittery plastic one. Use LED lights instead of fluorescent lighting. Sokar lanterns instead of electric ones. Use paper kites instead of balloons. Basically look for more environmentally friendly and less damaging decor alternatives to your traditional decor.
To give a special touch to your decoration, you can also make your own DIY decor. Read here how you can make a DIY Christmas tree and decor out of natural material.
CELEBRATION FOODS
No celebration is complete without food. Rather food is the focus of many traditional festivals. When kids grow up, they remember the special delicacies made for particular festivals more often than any other details. Now, when it comes to a sustainable lifestyle, food is one of the most impactful sustainable change, you can read more about that in our article understanding sustainable food. So when we are talking about making your celebrations more environmentally and socially sustainable here is what you could do with your food.
Prefer local, more plant-based, and sustainable food for your celebration. Now I totally understand if your traditional delicacies are not plant-based then in that case, you can either re-discover the same recipe with some plant-based alternatives or at least try to incorporate as much seasonal, native, local, organic ingredients possible. If you not cooking yourself, definitely avoid ordering junk food, there are always better and healthier food options, remember food is the highlight of any celebration!
Be mindful of food waste, for environmental and social reasons. Every time you are wasting food, the natural resources invested in growing and preparing that food is getting wasted, plus the organic waste creates greenhouse gases and contributes to climate change directly. When we are preparing for our celebrations, do not forget the huge population of our planet, which goes hungry every day. So wasting food is also unethical and we need to take responsibility to avoid food wastage.
If you are ordering try to minimize the food packaging waste as much possible. Also for serving, avoid disposable, single-use items like table wares and cutleries. If you have a bigger number of guests and no other option, opt for sustainable single-use food ware like palm leaf plates,
bowls, wooden cutleries.
A great alternative is renting parties, where they rent out all the necessary party supplies including decorations and tableware.
SUSTAINABLE GIFTING
Like food, gifts are one of the important aspects of any celebration. Thanks to our capitalist economy, traditional and religious festivals are now huge seasons for the consumer goods industry to boost their businesses. When any festival is approaching, look at any form of media, they are promoting last minutes gift guides, must-have gifts this season, etc. However, a sustainable lifestyle teaches us about being mindful and conscious, so why not extend that into our celebrations and festivals? So when choosing gifts for your loved ones or even large quantities of gifts like return favors, choose a gift that won’t get wasted and will be used by the receiver.
The best gifting is always, gifting some experiences, training, classes or things to do instead of stuff. But if you want to gift items choose sustainable gifts. Here is our very popular sustainable gifting guide, which will give you very unique ideas from handmade gifts to the gift of plants and homemade compost!
Also when we are talking about gifts, let’s not forget about gift wrapping. Ditch those plastic glossy gift wrapping papers instead opt for fabric gift wrapping.
I hope this universal guide of sustainable celebrations and festivals will help make any of your celebrations more sustainable.