Waste-free kids birthday party

I have discovered that I am pretty much a kids birthday party Grinch. I don’t like how birthdays these days are more about celebrating a major entertainment franchise than about the actual kid! Disposable party supplies abound, printed with super heroes, tv characters and video game characters. Since I go out of my way to avoid disposable stuff, I won’t purchase throwaway party supplies (let alone expensive franchised ones). So how do you have a fun birthday party for a kid without all that stuff? Thankfully, my son is still young enough to let me run the show without too much complaint. Here’s how I was able to get away with a waste-free birthday for a five-year-old. 

Since we live in the age of Facebook, I made an online event to invite friends and family. Sure, there were a few relatives we actually had to pick up a phone and call (we’ll excuse the 80-year-old great-grandparents for not being on Facebook) but we avoided having to use any paper invitations. Perhaps as Holden gets older, we’ll make some homemade ones from recycled paper to hand out to friends at school.

For me, the best part of a birthday is the cake. I love any excuse to bake (and eat) cake, so of course it was homemade. We eat pretty healthy around here, even when it comes to cake, so here is the recipe I chose to use.

There were ZERO complaints from picky small people or grown ups. It was delicious! The bonus? No icing-covered box to try and recycle. We also have a set of tall birthday candles that we reuse each year. This year I let Holden pick out five candles and place them on the cake himself.

To serve the cake, we used our reusable set of ‘party’ dishes. We own about a dozen each of cups and plates, which seems to be a good number, in case you are curious. I also have a set of plastic forks I have hoarded over time.

When people put out paper napkins at parties, guests dutifully take one as they load their food. I've observed that many of them go into the garbage completely unused … which just seems like a waste! At our parties, I have cloth napkins handy in case anyone needs one, and cleaning cloths in case anything gets spilled. If it did come to using paper napkins, they are fine to be put in a compost bin instead of the garbage.

Gifts are by far the thing that this birthday Grinch has the hardest time with. How do you politely ask your friends not to bring cheap plastic gifts that will break within minutes and end up in the garbage? Here’s the solution I came up with this year. Holden has a real love of being outside in our garden, and he loves flowers. Since his birthday is in June, it is gardening season. In lieu of a toy, I asked guests to bring Holden an annual flower to plant in our garden. It was a hit! Holden and his friends all planted the flowers in the garden. Now he gets to see them grow and bloom every day, and I don’t have to deal with toy overload.

When the party came to a close, I handed out our ‘treat bags.’ As you can probably guess, I’m not the kind of person to hand out bags of dollar-store gadgets and sugary candy to our guests. Man ... am I a birthday Grinch or what! But I do think it is nice to give guests a token of your appreciation for coming to celebrate. I found a great deal on reusable sand toys. So to go with the outdoors/flowers/garden theme of the day, each kid got a sand pail with a shovel and a little watering can. We had guests from age 3-11 and everyone seemed pretty happy with them. I call that a win!

All in all, we made very little garbage from the party. There were few potato chip bags and a couple of generic balloons. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and to me, planting flowers with all the kids seemed like a lot more fun than sitting there watching only one kid shred open an excess of presents packaged in garbage. Holden still got the spotlight when it came to the cake. He got the full Happy Birthday song experience, to blow out his candles, and most importantly, to play with friends all afternoon.

What is your experience with child birthdays? Do you have waste-reducing tips to pass on? Join the conversation below.