GreeniacsGuides
Activities
Childrens Eco Birthday Party Guide
|
Written by Suzanne Heibel
|
||||
| Thursday, 21 May 2009 | ||||
Children’s Birthday Party: Guide to Making it Eco-Friendly!BENEFITS for the Environment: More than a regular birthday! At birthdays there are theme (and single-use) cups, napkins, plates, cakes, party favors, decorations, and possibly some sort of ornate or ceremonial headdress. If all of these can be replaced with recycled or reusable products then it is an apparent bonus. BENEFITS to your wallet: High. BENEFITS to the party crew: High! Although they may not know it, you are helping those babies solidify a positive future world and environment. Anything done green is plus one for team “prevent global asphyxiation.” Cost: No increases in price. Time and Effort: Medium. It is no more than a normal birthday would take, unless you do not have any eco-friendly stores in your city, of if you wait too long to order supplies off the internet. Instructions: 1. If you are going for a theme, find a website or local store that has recycled paper products. (100% recycled paper napkins use over 97% less carbon dioxide (CO2) than bleached napkins and 95% less water!). A great supplier is www.GreenPartyGoods.com. They have classy biodegradable bamboo plates and utensils for perhaps a teenager and up crowd, and for the young kiddies there are utensils that look exactly like plastic but are made of either corn or potatoes. Other useful websites are: www.littlestarcreativeparties.com, a website for kids; www.Plumparty.com offers more grown-up type kitchenware. Not very many chain stores have recycled party supplies, but many of them sell items like Seventh Generation, which specialize in eco-friendly paper products. So if you want a theme, the internet is the best stop. 2. Pick a location. At a park? At a beach? Your very own backyard? Having an outside birthday party will get kids on their feet and running around, giving them the exercise they want and need. If a large outdoor venue is far from your home, suggest that the kids get dropped off at your house then recruit your spouse or another child's adult to carpool. This makes it less of a hassle for everyone and at the same time saves gas. The best thing would be to find a park in your neighborhood. Have cake and presents at your home, as garbage can be more controlled, recyclables would be recycled hopefully, and maybe even you would be able to compost leftover food! Then walk the guests safely to a local park where they can play outside. For information on setting up a compost system at your home if you do not have a local composting service, check out: http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsGuides/Make-Your-Own-Compost.html and http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsGuides/How-to-Build-a-Composting-Toilet.html. 3. Every party needs games! Plus they don't use nearly as many resources as crafts do. Outdoor Games: If the event is held anywhere besides a beach, park, or pool, then entertainment may be in short supply and will need to be provided by you, the party planner. There are some awesome outdoor game ideas and the only supplies you will need are balloons, music, a hula hoop, and a potato! Check out: http://childparenting.about.com/od/kidsparties/tp/outdoorpartygam.htm. Sure using balloons for a mere minute is a waste but you can always buy biodegradable ones! Check out: http://www.oneinhundred.com/Wholesale-customized-printed/Biodegradable-latex-balloon.htm. Indoor Games: If it is winter/cold, raining on the b-day, or you just don't have a backyard, indoor games are perfect. One my mom used to do is a string maze where she would vacate a bedroom of all living things and create a string maze. If there are 5 total guests at your party you'll need five spoons of thick strings of all different colors. Hemp is a good material because it is generally accepted as an eco-friendly resource and it is tough. At the end of the string attach a prize, like a piece of candy or perhaps a bag of homemade organic cookies, then slowly unwind the string all over the room: under chairs, around lamp shades, etc. Do this with all five strings so when the maze is done there is a colorful string maze that kids will have to climb over and under things and each other to receive their prize at the end. More active indoor games can be found at http://familyfun.go.com/games/indoor-outdoor-games/specialfeature/cabin-fever-games/. 4. For an eco-b-day, a homemade cake is the best! Well, homemade cakes are actually always the best, but the fact that you can pick your ingredients and do it without taking an extra trip travelling somewhere means you are reducing your carbon footprint. 5. The goody bag is the most promising of promises because even if you didn't have fun at the party, you at least get a sweet conciliation prize. I remember when I was in elementary school I would get paper party bags with junk from 99 cent stores that I would usually tire of and throw away in a week’s time. For reusable bags revisit Green Party Goods (http://greenpartygoods.com/), they are made of cloth so they can be used again and again. Plus they and super cute—my personal favorite is the Castle Bag Princess Bear—so they will actually be used again. If the bag's not enough throw in some homemade organic cookies, small bags of trail mix, and some small eco-friendly toys. www.PlanetHappyToys.com has some cool ones, but they are a bit pricey. Amazon's “eco-friendly toy town” (http://www.amazon.com/Eco-Friendly-Toys-Green/b?ie=UTF8&node=562229011) and www.FatBrainToys.com also have good options. Get out there and be creative, it will be fun for you, your kids, their friends, and great for the environment! 1http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-napkin.php.
1. 20-01-2011 20:25 Foreign Language Games Foreign Language Games is best game to play and a common man can easily play it. you cna get it online or ofline to your computer there are lots of websites avilable in across the worls who offer online Art and craft games game to download. [B]null[/B][B]Foreign Language Games[/B] Registered Only registered users can write comments. |
||||
| Last Updated ( Friday, 01 April 2011 ) | ||||
SEARCH GREENIACS.COM
Latest News
- Brazil Navy investigates new oil spill off coast
- South Kingstown Journal: In Rhode Island, Protecting a Shoreline and a Lifeline
- Green Blog: On Our Radar: A Nuclear Snapshot
- Apple to use only green power for main data center
- Brazil’s President Faces Defining Decision Over Forest Bill
- Denmark aims low with green energy policy
Green Facts
-
A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.
-
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
-
An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!
-
Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.
-
A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.
-
Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.
-
Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.
-
Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.
-
You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.
-
You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.
-
Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.
-
Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.
-
The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.
-
If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.
-
Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.
-
It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
-
Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.
-
States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.
-
American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.
-
One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
-
Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.
-
Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.
-
A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.
-
Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.
-
Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months
-
Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
-
Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.
-
In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.
-
Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.
-
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
-
Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.
-
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
-
82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.
-
77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.
-
You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.
-
Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
-
In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.
-
For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.
-
Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.


