Tips for a Sustainable Summer Party
Summer traditions for a lot of people include going to and hosting get togethers and backyard cookouts. While a lot of things we do as a society that aren’t sustainable are because of time and convenience, there are easy and practical steps you can take to make your parties more sustainable, and rewarding! When we were on Good Day Dayton in June, we had planned to share several tips for reducing waste at your summer parties, but we ran out of time and only got to talk about one of the items we brought. Our 2023 Plastic Free July calendar links to a Sierra Club article on the 4th about having a Plastic Free 4th of July party, and there are many other articles on the Internet in the same vein, like this one. Here, we want to focus on 3 areas to make your parties more sustainable.
Zero Waste Recipes
We love cooking and baking, experimenting with new recipes, and figuring out how to use all of the food in our refrigerators. One of our favorite bloggers for getting zero waste ideas is Zero Waste Chef. The statistics on Food Waste in the U.S. estimate that 30-40% of the food that is produced goes to waste. Reducing food waste is one of the top solutions to climate change according to Project Drawdown, so if everybody could embrace even some of these actions, we would go a long way towards mitigating the crisis that we’re in.
Buy local from farmer’s markets
Try to buy your meat from a local butcher shop to avoid the plastic and styrofoam that you get at the grocery store
Plan ahead and use what you have in the pantry or fridge
Don’t buy beverages in plastic bottles. Opt for cans (infinitely recyclable!), or refill growlers at your local brewery
Even better, make your own beverage. Natalie’s mulberry lemonade that we took to Good Day Dayton, using lemons she rescued and mulberries and lavender from her backyard, is a great example of using ingredients that you don’t have to buy.
When the party is over, sometimes the leftovers get thrown away. To reduce food waste, take-home containers with you to take some of the food. There are a lot of great recipes out there that use leftover food to make a new meal (stale bread to make croutons, chopped fruit to put in smoothies)
Food Serving and Storage
If you’re hosting a party, encourage people to bring their own dishes. Whatever food or snacks that are served, try to not serve them on single-use items so they don’t end up in the landfill. Instead, ask a few friends to help you rinse and wash off the dishes before they leave. Or if you’re at someone else’s party, take a few moments to rinse off your reusable containers that you brought for an easier cleanup.
Ditch the plastic wrap! Aluminum foil is slightly better since it tends to be made from recycled aluminum, and you can get multiple uses out of it. We really like using silicone food covers and storage bags, and beeswax wrap for food storage. You can use the bowls and dishes you already have and cover them with these items.
Recycling
With all of the soda (pop if you’re from the Midwest 😁 ) and beer cans, make sure to designate a difference between the recycling and the trash. Aluminium is an infinitely recyclable material, and it takes up to 95 percent less energy to recycle it than to produce primary aluminium, which also limits emissions, including greenhouse gases. Today, about 75 percent of all aluminium produced in history, nearly a billion tons, is still in use (Source: Wikipedia). Instead of sending that can to sit in a landfill for hundreds of years, toss it into the recycling bin, where it can get a new life.
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As we always like to stress, the goal is not to be perfect while striving for zero waste. Just doing some of these things and making them repeatable is better than doing nothing at all.
From everybody here at Waste-Free Dayton, wishing you a happy and safe, and sustainable, 4th of July!