How can you celebrate a birthday in a sustainable way? If you're looking for tips on how to have the most eco-friendly birthday party possible, you've come to the right place! Your own special day is a very special day of the year that should be celebrated properly. Unfortunately, gift wrapping, theme plates, plastic cups, balloons, food waste and the over-consumption of short-lived gifts usually make it quite an environmental burden.
Fortunately, a sustainable birthday is relatively easy to plan and implement. Whether you're turning 18, 40, or 75, or organizing a fun children's birthday party, whether you just want to celebrate on a small scale with a few friends or have a really big party - in this article you'll find the best tips for a sustainable birthday. Let's go!
Here you can find a short overview in advance:
- Send invitations digitally
- Choose the right location
- Use reusable birthday decorations
- Bake a vegan birthday cake
- Plan food purchases depending on number of guests
- Making sustainable and long-lasting joyful gifts
- Wrap gifts environmentally friendly
- Playing parlor games together
- Serving sustainable snacks and meals
- Place value on the important things
Why celebrate a sustainable birthday?
How beautiful that you were born! We humans especially like to celebrate our birthday because it is important for our own Well-being is because he annually brings together with all our friends and family and because it is wonderfully suitable for reflect on one's own life development.
But for many people, a sustainable birthday sounds rather complicated and exhausting at first. Why should you even care about celebrating your own completion of a year of life as environmentally friendly and fair as possible?
For the necessary motivation and the corresponding stamina I would like to start by giving you a brief overview of the most important advantages of an environmentally friendly birthday party:
- Avoid garbage (e.g. through a plastic free celebration)
- Conserving the earth's natural resources (e.g. through an appreciative approach to food at the birthday party).
- Save money (e.g., through reusable decorations and objects).
- Be a role model for others (show that you can also celebrate sustainably)
Can you think of any other benefits? Feel free to post them in the comments and I'll add them to this list.
10 tips for a sustainable birthday party
Now you know the advantages and motives for celebrating your own cradle festival in the most ecological way possible. How can it now be put into practice in a practicable way? Now, as promised, here are the best tips! Use them to organize your birthday in a green way.
1. make your own invitations and cards or send them digitally
The sustainable cards to your birthday party are all the more effective and waste-reducing, the personal they are and the less material you buy for it must.
Just like birthday cards given away, you can, for example, simply create your own from waste paper. All you really need is a reusable scooping frame, a tub, old newspaper, a rolling pin and a few other utensils. You can find lots of instructions on the Internet.
Alternatively, you could send out your birthday invitations in a creative, digital format. You can still design them yourself and then simply send them to your guests by mail or messenger. This is in the spirit of the waste-avoiding Zero Waste Lifestyle and also helps you in the process, save money through sustainabilitybecause you avoid both material and postage costs.
Tip: You can also use the invitations to announce that you want to celebrate your birthday in a sustainable way and what is important to you. This way, sustainability becomes a kind of motto that everyone attaches special importance to on this day.
2. choose the right location
Where you celebrate your birthday is quite crucial to whether it will be a sustainable celebration or not. Ideally, you invite your guests to your homeIn this way, you can not only avoid many long and energy-intensive journeys and have the organization absolutely in your own hands. In addition, you make yourself independent of any opening hours.
A sustainable birthday party can of course also be celebrated in a restaurant with a sustainable philosophy. It is best to choose a cuisine in which preference is given to vegetable, seasonal and regional dishes on the menu stand.
Tip: How you eat vegan in any restaurant I'll explain how you can do this in more detail in the linked blog post.
3. use reusable birthday decoration
At a conventional party, it's mainly the decorations that leave behind lots of trash the following day. Garbage because it is Garlands, balloons, confetti and co. disposable products that end up in the garbage can after use.
Apart from the fact that you can store them and use them again, you can also directly Use reusable alternatives and natural materials or simply decorate minimalist but equally effective.
How about for example die cut confetti from foliage leaves or branches, leaves and twigs as table decorations? There are no limits to the imagination.
4. bake a vegan birthday cake
It doesn't matter if you for you and your guests or for a special person as a gift bake: but a beautiful, sustainable birthday should not go without an environmentally friendly birthday cake!
This, of course, should be free of resource-intensively produced and animal suffering causing, animal food and instead from vegetable, regional and seasonal Ingredients exist.
Here are a few ideas and recipes, for delicious birthday cakes:
- Strawberry cream pie (vegan)
- Cake with chocolate butter curd cream (vegan)
- Chocolate cake with shaved chocolate (vegan)
Tip: If you're not quite convinced yet, or want to know, Why the vegan lifestyle is so effective and sustainableI explain the motifs in the linked, separate blog article.
5. plan food purchases depending on number of guests
To Avoid food waste and conserve natural resourcesIf you're planning to have a large number of guests, you should only buy as much food as you really need. Make sure you know how many guests you can expect - and plan your shopping accordingly, that as far as possible nothing is left over and possibly ends up in the garbage can.
Here are some more more tips to limit food waste and to show more appreciation for elaborately produced food:
- Use leftovers for smoothies and soups
- Give the rest of the food to your guests or take it with you from the party location.
- Boil down or freeze remaining foods
- Provide other foods only when needed and leave them still packed beforehand
6. make sustainable and long-lasting joyful gifts
Of course, also the birthday gift as personal as possible not be missing! Make sure that it fits perfectly to the person you are giving it to and that it will give him or her pleasure for as long as possible.
A Rose you can fold yourself from paper for example instead of importing them from Africa and then letting them fly into the organic waste garbage can a few days after the birthday. A potted plant is of course also much more environmentally friendly.
Just as well offer natural soaps, Fairtrade chocolate or vegan wines as an ecological gift idea. But shared experiences are particularly effective! How about a concert ticket, a weekend together or planting a tree together? You have a cornucopia of possibilities at your disposal!
7. wrapping gifts in an environmentally friendly way
Many birthday gifts require packaging - accordingly, you should choose your Wrap gifts as plastic-free and natural as possible. Get creative. Use for example old fabrics, oilcloth, shipping boxes, sacks or newspaper and packaging paper, to skillfully avoid brand new, expensive and less environmentally friendly coated wrapping paper.
With knotted, natural twine you can also avoid the classic plastic scotch tape - and thus further non-biodegradable waste.
Tip: What else you can upcycle from old packagingBy the way, you can find out more about this in a detailed, separate post on the blog.
8. play board games together
Party games that you can play with multiple people make wonderful fun activities at any good birthday party. For example, I can recommend "Extreme Activity," "Poker," "Beer Pong" or "Apple Spritzer Pong" with glasses, "Black Stories" or also "City, country, river".
If the weather cooperates, is also "Viking Chess" on the lawn always entertaining, active game that refreshes any party.
9. serving sustainable snacks and meals
A sustainable birthday party without treats, finger food and a delicious meal? Unthinkable! When choosing again make sure that it is Where possible, again around animal, environmentally and socially responsible food and ingredients acts.
Fittingly, I have given you some suggestions and ideas as a small source of inspiration compiled:
- Puff pastry buns with spinach filling (vegan)
- Indian lentil curry (vegan)
- Vegetable party balls (vegan)
10. place value on the really important things
A sustainable birthday is minimalist and puts the most emphasis on the essentials: Spending time with family and real friend:inside and to celebrate that one has become one year older and more experienced again. Gifts, wrappings, cakes, decorations and co are all well and good, but in the end, being together on the day of honor is what counts the most. And that's basically pretty sustainable 🙂
Tip: By the way, you can celebrate not only the annual birthday, but also the Celebrate New Year sustainably and without fireworks. You can also find out how this works in the associated blog post.
Sustainable birthday celebration made easy!
Whether you're celebrating yourself or organizing a party for someone special, whether you're making your own invitations and gift cards or sending them digitally, whether you're whipping up vegan dishes, reducing food waste, or using reusable decorations - you've got it all. a birthday as sustainable as possible is definitely feasible without having to bend completely.
In the end, what matters is that you purposefully avoid waste and overconsumption and instead place a special emphasis on spending time together with family and friends.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you once again and wish you all the best. I really hope that I could help you with this article to a more environmentally friendly day of honor. Do you have any questions, suggestions or further tips? Then just write me a comment under this post.
Stay sustainable,
PS: No other date makes us so aware that we are getting older and that a human life is finite. How you celebrate as many birthdays as possible, become stone old live long I'll explain how you can do this in the next article.
We want to prevent our party from leaving behind a lot of trash, especially the decorations the following day. So we are talking to an equipment rental company for events to find sustainable solutions. Thank you for your other tips on sustainability.
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