Putting a recycle sign on a blue bin and hoping people recycle at your Christmas party might earn you brownie points – but it doesn’t make your party “green”. While there are quite a few guides on how you can green your party, most of us don’t want to bend over backwards to reduce our carbon footprint.
The good news is that there are many practical changes you can make in order to green your Christmas party – it just depends how extreme you’re prepared to go….
Your menu
You can easily green your menu by serving little or no meat. While this might make you an unpopular host, there’s a lot of research that will help you justify your decision if you receive any complaints about the meat-free spread at your party:
According to a widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 18% of annual worldwide GHG emissions are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. Recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang, however, found that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6-billion tons of carbon dioxide a year (a staggering 51% of annual worldwide GHG emissions).
While facts about CO2 production are published more often than facts about our water footprints, it’s interesting to note the effects of meat consumption on our water supplies. According to an article in The Ecologist, 10% of our water consumption is related to industrial products, 5% to water consumption, and a whopping 85% of humanity’s water footprint is related to the consumption of agricultural products (particularly animal products).
When you consider the fact that it takes 2,400 litres of water to produce a hamburger (this is the entire lifecycle footprint – from feeding the cattle to transporting meat and cooking), it makes perfect sense to scale back on the meat we eat. Calculate your own water footprint here.
Eco-friendly invites and cards
Many websites give eco-friendly card invite ideas that are just way too time-consuming to make it a viable alternative to printed cards. Ideas like using recycled paper are good – but other suggestions include using paper from “tree-free fibres like banana leaves and elephant dropping”. Regardless of whether or not one would actually find these Jungle Book paper options in local stores, it’s probably more effort than we would like to put into Christmas cards and invitations.
While most of us book our appointments and meetings electronically, many of us are still sending printed invitations and cards – especially for birthday and Christmas parties. It’s time to make the switch – not only should you invite your Christmas party guests electronically (with e-mail calendars), but you should also be sending electronic cards.
Nobody likes struggling with new software, but these four sites are the top e-Vite sites. They’re easy to use and can be personalised so that you are able to send unique, great-looking Christmas invites and cards:
- Pingg: Pingg has a wide selection of plug-and-plug e-vites that are easy to customise. Find out more about Pingg
- Paperless Post: This isn’t the best site for Christmas party invitations and cards, but if you’re planning a wedding and need an online solution for sending out Save the Dates and formal invitations, Paperless Post might be a good option. Start designing cards and e-vites on Paperless Post
- Crush3r: With Crush3r, you can take the most basic looking e-vite and customise every single aspect – from fonts and graphics to colours and images. Crush3r works well for people who have a bit of HTML experience (the site also has a CSS editor, so you can add videos and other cool extras to your cards and invitations). Check out Crush3r
- MyPunchbowl: This is a good option if you are arranging a party for a lot of people because you will also have online rsvp functionalities. People can propose new times (if your suggested time doesn’t fit their schedule) and you can also set some guests as VIPs. Visit the MyPunchbowl website
Reduce your waste
During the Christmas season, you will often find that you’re taking out the trash twice a day instead of twice a week. Extra guests in your home, combined with more food and lots of eating usually leads to an abnormal amount of waste.
Reduce the waste in your home by simply not buying paper and plastic cups, plates, cutlery and napkins this year. While it saves clean-up time when you simply hand out drinks in Styrofoam cups, this contributes to a huge amount of rubbish that will end up in our landfills.
The Live Eco team
