My eco-friendly(er) business
My eldest son recently got elected as the class ‘Eco Warrior’ at school and it made me feel so proud. I guess some of my early eco-friendly roots are filtering through to my children after all!! But it did get me thinking that I could be doing an awful lot more.
I was raised in the 80’s by a bit of a hippy mum. She would take my sister and I along to rallies and protests at the weekends. We spent our childhoods being educated and reminded about the impact which humans were having on the earth. Somewhere, in a box in my mum’s attic are a tonne of newspaper clippings from the front page of the Surrey comet of Alfie and I dressed as washing machines, tree frogs or whatever else fitted the bill that month!!
My mother and her colleagues at ‘Friends of the Earth’ were responsible for pioneering paper recycling in the Kingston borough. It’s mad to think that just a few years ago paper recycling wasn’t even a thing. Back then, many belittled the movement and laughed it off as nonsense. I am proud to say that we played a huge part in making it a normal part of everyday life.
Sunday mornings for us consisted of spending the day at the dump! We would man a giant shipping container and families from across the borough would arrive with their newspapers for recycling. My job would be to scale the mountain of stacked newspapers and place the bundles neatly at the top of the tower. It was so fun and I have many fond memories of that time (my mum would probably say that I was more of a hindrance and caused many avalanches of newspapers to come tumbling down from the top!!!). So that was the start of paper recycling in Kingston. Eventually the council took over, funded it themselves and many years later it developed into the door-to-door service we know today.
Fast-forward 35 years and now I’m a mum myself. It’s hard to maintain an environmentally friendly lifestyle when you’re pushed for time and always rushing around, and I am ashamed to say I make a lot of personal choices which have a negative impact on the environment.
So, a few years ago, I decided I would begin to make some micro-changes into my life and business to try and be more authentic to what I believe in and help parents to have a Zero waste kids parties
I started by making some re-useable pass-the-parcel bags, created by a lovely local supplier; Carrie at Fair Trade Clothing.
Next I decided to replace my ‘snap bands’ with a greener gift. Nowadays in a Pop Star Princess party all the children receive a ‘magic’ bracelet. When they are given to the children our entertainers help them to cast a magic spell which makes them grow into flowers!!. (SPOILER ALERT! They aren’t actually ‘magic’ but are made from seeded paper! Shhhh. Don’t tell the children!!!)
I also offer an eco-hire package which consists of tableware and decorations. This helps to reduce the amount of bin bags for landfill at the end of a party.
Nobody is perfect. We all have a long way to go and busy lives to lead, but any teeny change is a change for good. I urge you to look for the quick wins you can make in your world to have an eco-friendlier life 🙂