10 Ways to Make your Next Event Environmentally Friendly

Happy Earth Day Everyone! Here for a short fun blog to give tips on how you can make your next birthday, wedding, or shower more earth friendly! Let’s get into it!

1. Pick an Eco-Friendly Venue

There are so many venues that are moving towards being more eco friendly from water usage and rooftop gardens to unique ways to cool and heat their venues. Taking the extra time to find a venue that suits your event but is also actively making a positive impact on the environment is a great step in making your event more eco friendly.

2. Work with Eco-Conscious Venders

Whether it is your florist, caterer, or even event planner, take the time to find vendors that are conscious of the carbon footprint events make and work to lower their own. My favorite wedding florist always encouraged brides to choose seasonal floral arrangements that did not have to be grown specifically for the event as well as donating any leftover florals to a local hospital. This was more cost effective to the bridal party as well as making the wedding more earth conscious!

3. Charity Registry

Weddings to baby showers and birthdays, we get a ton of things that sit in our homes and collect dust. The production of those items makes a huge negative impact on our earth as well as various communities across the world. The best way to alleviate this is to ask for monetary or gift card gifts and have a charity registry where guests can donate to a charity of your choosing or purchase items for charities such as foster youth initiatives

4. Choose Fresh and Healthy Meal Alternatives

Now more than ever it is important we are supporting our local farms and food suppliers. When choosing food for cocktail time to main meal shopping local and sourcing produce and other ingredients from local farmers you will be helping your local community and businesses and lowering carbon footprint by not supporting over processed and shipped foods.

5. Donate Décor

This is something that is such an easy way to positively impact the earth that gets overlooked. Donate flowers to hospitals, homeless shelters, and senior homes. Non perishable and certain food items can be donated to soup kitchens or directly to those in need in your local community. Fabrics and linens can be donated to stripping companies and upcycled into clothes or new items. Having an event planner to coordinate all of this could be a huge time saver.

6. Plated Meals in Place of Buffets

Serving individual meals controls how much food is ordered and produced and it minimizes perishable food waste.

7. Natural Themes

Earth tones and natural themes are really in right now and taking this a step further such as biodegradable plant confetti, lavender tosses and utilizing the natural décor of an event can make a difference on your event’s carbon footprint. As much as I love ribbons, banners and balloons they are a huge contributing factor to killing wildlife. A way to help this rather than completely cutting décor out is to use biodegradable replacements and make sure all balloons and other décor are properly disposed or recycled!

8. Provide Rides for Guests

Transporting guests is another huge carbon footprint point for events. Having guests stay at the hotel or venue the event is held is a good alternative. Shuttles and electric busses that go around and pick up guests are a great alternative. Back in Chicago I worked a wedding that hired horse and bike drawn carriages that went around to each hotel and various spots in the city and brought guests to the event. People loved that!

9. Leave Single Use Behind for Biodegradable

This goes hand in hand with choosing eco friendly vendors. There are so many catering companies that use reusable or biodegradable cutlery. For events the trend of glass and reusable cups is hot right now, but when it is not possible to have reusable always shoot for biodegradable.

10. Go Digital

Let’s all be honest with ourselves, when we save the date cards, birthday and event invites we look at it, take a picture and throw it out. If you are planning an event with a large number of people utilizing an event app to send virtual invites is the best earth saving technique. It also increases guest interaction and engagement. You can send updates, schedules, things to do in the area and allow guests to connect with one another all while doing your part to help our Earth!



I hope everyone has an amazing Earth Day. This is definitely one of my favorite days of the year where everyone is a little more intentional on how our lives are impacting the earth that gives us life. Earth day also helps remind us that we are all connected and our actions have consequences for everyone on the earth for generations to come. Hopefully we can all continue this spirit everyday!

Are you Looking for an Event Planner? Check out Life’s Sweet Moments and follow along on our social media sites! Also reach out with any questions or inquiries!

Website: lifessweetmoments.com 

Instagram: lsms_events ; sweeteventssweetercoffee

Facebook: Life’s Sweet Moments

Twitter: @LSMEvents