Wren | Actions

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Special events like birthdays, weddings, and other celebrations create wonderful memories but often result in waste and emissions disproportionate to their duration. If you’re organizing an event, here's how to keep the planet in mind:

1. Skip paper invites

Billions of trees are cut down to make paper every year, and the paper industry accounts for around 2% of industrial emissions. Skipping paper invites might seem like a small step, but this can snowball into meaningful change when your connections feel encouraged to do the same. There are virtual invitation services like Partiful available online, or you can create your own design using Canva and send it to your guest list electronically. If you decide to create paper invites for a special event, make a commitment to plant some trees to regenerate our forests.

2. Encourage planet-friendly transport

Suggest that your guests take public transit to your event, or help them organize carpooling with the free app, Caroster. This reduces the transport emissions for your party while also encouraging responsible behaviors like designated drivers.

3. Choose sustainable decorations

Single-use decorations are extremely detrimental to our environment— balloons are the biggest plastic killer of seabirds. Choose a more sustainable approach by renting decor, making your own with natural or repurposed materials, or buying secondhand from thrift stores or online marketplaces. You may be surprised at what decor is available secondhand—from fake flowers to wedding arches. Once you’ve finished with your decor, be sure to return, re-use, gift, donate, or recycle items where possible. Another way to reduce waste is to embrace minimalism and consider each decor choice carefully.

4. Shop the closet or pick a pre-loved outfit

If your party has a dress code or theme, encourage guests to get creative with what they already own, borrow outfits from friends, or buy secondhand from thrift stores, online marketplaces, or consignment stores. For events like weddings, in-person or online clothing rental companies can be great options for sourcing suits, dresses, and other formal outfits.

5. Create a thoughtful menu

Celebrations often include our favorite foods, and rightly so, but also present opportunities to make more environmentally-friendly choices. If you’re providing food for your guests, perhaps you could serve plant-based sides and reserve animal proteins for a couple of special dishes. Or maybe you could make a plant-based version of a crowd favorite and see if people can tell the difference. You could also encourage guests to bring plant-based dishes, potluck-style.

Preventing food waste is another key consideration of a thoughtful menu. Make smaller portions of dishes that don’t keep well, like fries, and consider a buffet instead of plated meals to allow guests to start small and get more servings later. If there are leftovers, fill your fridge, send guests home with food in reusable containers, and have your compost bin on standby for what doesn’t get claimed.

Hilary from Wren says: An important prerequisite to preventing food waste is communication. At my wedding, everyone was on the same page about keeping leftovers. We made sure the kitchen staff knew where the containers were, and we enjoyed delicious leftovers in the following days.

6. Consider your recycling strategy

The key to effective recycling is preparation. Have different bins at the drinks table for aluminum, glass, and plastic recycling to make it easy for guests to keep containers out of the landfill. Depending on your location, you can drop also containers at a cash-back recycling depot after the event to recoup some costs.

7. Support local businesses

When you support local, you’re avoiding the transport emissions that would be required to get a product from a faraway place into your hands. You can support local across many areas—from furniture rentals to food and drinks.

Hilary from Wren says: At my wedding, we only supplied beverages made in our province. Some products—like tonic water—were difficult to find locally, but with persistent research, we found everything we needed. This helped us discover amazing drinks we may not have tried otherwise, and we loved being able to collect some products directly from the manufacturing sites.

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