Party and event catering often results in landfill bins full of food and disposable, single-use plastic. This is however easily avoidable. We share 9 ways you can make your party plastic free, ensure there is no single use at your sustainable soiree, and put on an eco-friendly event.

Swap single use for reusable when catering an event to make it more sustainable. Which of the below solutions will work for you and your gathering depends on its size, the guests, and what you have available in your home or community.

Either way, we are sure one of these solutions will enable you to cut down on the waste produced when celebrating and will possibly enable you to make your celebration completely waste free.

1. Tell everyone to bring their own

Easiest for a small gathering of close friends and family, simply include a note in the invite or tell invitees in person (and remind them closer to the event) to please bring their own set of cutlery and a bowl or plate to use on the day.

This will also work for any event for sustainability minded folk as they should be happy to BYO as either they usually do anyway (this is us!) or will appreciate the effort made to keep the event waste free and would be happy to bring their own.

As host, try to take a few extras yourself in case some people forget.

All the dishes can either be washed and dried before the guests take them home if there is somewhere to do this or they can take them home dirty and wash them themselves.

This is our go-to solution for things like picnics and barbecues with more people than we have plates.

2. Find a local party kit you can borrow or hire

Community party crates that can be booked or hired for parties and events are a brilliant way to easily implement zero waste catering. We’ve heard of a few being offered through various avenues in Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. 

For instance, Bendigo-based Bendigo Zero Waste has party crates for hire. They include 30 place settings of plates, bowls, cups, knifes, forks, and spoons. A fee is charged for hire and cleaning, or you can clean them yourself for a discount. In Melbourne, The Rogue Ginger shares the plastic cups, kids plates and ceramic plates she bought from local charity stores for her son’s first birthday with the local community.

And Perth-based Treading My Own Path has an initiative called Community Dishes - a set of 50 reusable crockery, cutlery and glassware that can be borrowed and brought back free of charge. So far it has replaced 4 077 single-use items with reusables!

Other places that offer these include Richmond Toy Library, Make Do Wollongong, Bayside Party Share, and the Northbridge Sustainability Group.

If you can’t find one in your area, why not start one! Sharing among a community is a fantastic way to reduce waste and to get to know the neighbours. You could also ask a few people who will be attending to bring all their plates etc from their kitchen to make up enough for everyone attending.

Or, if renting a venue, find out if they have crockery you can hire to use as well.

This is a great option for children’s (adults’!) birthday parties and other large celebrations with extended family and the amalgamation of different friendship groups, as well as small events.

3. Buy/source free secondhand plates & cutlery

Search second hand charity shops for all the eating implements you need. You may need to go to a few to find enough to buy and to find what you’re looking for, but buying preloved is so much better than buying new and you could create a beautifully eclectic set.

You can either hang on to it for future parties if you have the space, donate it back to a charity shop or use it to make a party crate that you can lend out and share with friends and family or anyone looking for a set to use for their event.

4. No choice but single-use? Use plastic-free, eco-friendly plates & platters

Sometimes the decision whether to use reusables or single use is not up to you. If you don’t have a say and are directed to use disposables, there are a few options that are more eco-friendly than plastic plates and cutlery that you can choose instead.

These options are all biodegradable or compostable so they can be composted after the event and will break down into soil unlike ones made from plastic, which will never break down. It is important that these are actually composted and not sent to landfill as they will not break down in landfill as there is no oxygen, which is needed for the process of decomposition.

They include:

• most plain paper plates (as long as they don't have a waxy coating),

• palm leaf plates and platters, which are made from naturally shed palm leaf sheaths and can withstand hot and cold temperatures and be washed and used again depending on the initial use,

• white pine untreated dishes or cones,

• home compostable compartmentalised plates like these Biocane ones

• cornstarch bowls and reusable biodegradable bamboo plates from EcoSouLife, which also has a cornstarch party pack that includes large plates, side plates, bowls, cups, forks, knives and spoons, and

• sustainably produced wooden cutlery such as One Tree Wooden Cutlery.

Going Green Solutions has a large range of compostable catering ware in both retail and wholesale (bulk) quantities if you are organising a large event.

5. Stick to finger food & fabric napkins

If you’re only serving finger food, you don’t need plates or cutlery! Napkins and palms serve as plates and fingers serve as cutlery.

You can either buy or make fabric napkins that can be kept and reused or if this is not an option, use paper napkins and compost them at the end of the event.

Guests could even be given the fabric napkin as a memento of the event and they could be instructed to take it home to create a reusable cutlery set they could keep in their bags to avoid single-use plastic cutlery and paper napkins when out and about.

6. Gift guests reusable eating implements

As part of the celebration, guests could be each given a reusable cutlery pack that they could use that day and take home to use in the future to reduce the waste they create. Depending on your budget, they could also be gifted a reusable cup and/or container to use that day and forever more for takeaway food instead of disposable food containers.

Low cost but good quality options include:

• fabric napkins

• bamboo sporks

• bamboo cutlery set

• coconut bowls

• rice husk lunch box

• stainless steel container

Sending more things out into the world is not ideal, so if this is the chosen solution, make sure that those receiving these are the right crowd for it and that they will actually be inspired to use them or will pass them on to someone else who will use them. You don’t want them languishing at the back of everyone’s kitchen cupboard unused afterwards.

In addition, if it is likely that most people attending already own these, giving them more would be a waste of resources.

7. Set up or hire a washing-up station

Businesses offering reusable plates and bowls and washing up services at events like Wash Against Waste, Mullum Cares’s Waste Free Catering, and Green My Plate are the perfect solution for zero waste catering of events.

Wash Against Waste provides events with reusable cups, plates and cutlery, which are used by vendors and then returned by visitors to be washed by a team of volunteers and used again. Its service is available for hire across Victoria. So far, it has been successfully used at over 200 events.

You could also set up a washing-up station on your own and gather your own team of volunteers to do the washing up and drying and redistributing of plates, cups, and cutlery. All that you need is a table, some buckets, water, and soap, and drying cloths.

Melbourne Farmers Markets does this every weekend at its markets all around Melbourne! It is easily replicable for school fetes, fundraising events, and festivals.

8. Use & reuse plastic party packs you already own

Have some plastic plates, cups, knifes, forks, and spoons you could use? The number one zero waste rule is use what you already have so get them out and put them to use at parties and barbecues.

For example, we have a tower of red party cups left over from our days of hosting rowdy parties in our younger years, as well as a few bags of plastic cutlery that were bought before we became aware of the massive problems caused by plastic pollution.

These could either be donated to someone or a group that would use them or we might as well use them - otherwise they would be well and truly wasted. I feel we would have to put up a sign or run around explaining to everyone that we didn’t buy new disposable plastic products for our get-together.

Clean and reuse these if possible as many times as possible and adopt another one of these plastic free party solutions when they are no longer usable and have reached the end of their life.

Dispose of them responsibly, recycling them if they can be recycled.

9. Have a bin for food waste & share out any leftovers

Lastly, for catering to be zero waste, no food should be wasted.

Try not to over-cater and give any leftovers to guests to take home to eat later. If there is still food left over, freezing it to keep it good for future eating is one option or you can give it away to people in your community via apps like Oilo or via freegan groups on Facebook.

A bin for food waste should be made available for guests who can’t finish their food if it is a commercial event or a large community event (family and friends should be fine to finish each other’s food!). Make sure this food is composted afterwards - food that ends up in landfill emits methane, a gas that is even worse than greenhouse gas and contributes to climate change.

Have you implemented any of these? Have you hosted a zero waste event another way? Let us know your zero waste celebration successes and failures in the comments below. 

Wondering how to decorate without the waste? See our articles sharing 6 Alternatives To Balloons And Other Plastic Single-Use Decorations and plastic-free Christmas decorations.

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