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How to Decorate Your Eco Table for an Eco Summer Party

How to Decorate Your Eco Table for an Eco Summer Party

Looking out of the window right now, it’s difficult to believe that summer will ever arrive. But with a few months left, it’s worth getting preparations in order if you want to have a planet friendly eco birthday party. After all, if the worst comes to the worst, you can still have it indoors by covering your eco tables with a tablecloth made from eco textiles, like hemp, organic cotton or linen.

 If you’ve ever held a children’s birthday party before you’ll know how they can create masses of waste to be slung in plastic bags and dumped in our overflowing landfill sites. Even worse the party bags, balloons and toys are often made from plastic, which doesn’t degrade and will pollute our soils forever.

 So if you’d like to have an environmentally friendly party this summer, here are some ideas for how you can do it without sacrificing your eco consciousness:

Eco party ware – Paper plates and plastic cups might be quick to clean up but they’re not very kind to the planet. So consider getting some organic tableware made from sustainably harvested bamboo, palm leaf, sugarcane or natural wheat fibre. Along with being longer lasting and luxurious, these materials are biodegradable. So should you ever need to throw them away they won’t cause long-term damage to the planet.

Organic cutlery – Plastic knives and forks don’t have many positives: they’re difficult to eat with and aren’t biodegradable. They might save washing up time, but a more eco conscious option would be to set your eco table with eco friendly birch cutlery. You might need to spend an extra five minutes washing up, but they can be reused afterwards and are biodegradable, should you ever need to throw them away. 

Eco placemats – On your eco table, instead of plastic placemats, why not use placemats made from recycled materials like vinyl or palm leaf? You could also provide your guests with some spongy cork coasters to complete your eco table’s environmentally friendly credentials.

Eco party bags – Made from plastic and packed with plastic toys, traditional party bags must give environmentalists nightmares. Thankfully, there are greener materials that can be used for party bags, like luxurious cotton or paper. Instead of cheap plastic toys, which get thrown away after barely being played with, why not pack your bags with balsa wood toy planes, mini plywood jigsaws and other gifts made from sustainable harvested wood and painted with non-toxic natural dyes. 

Latex balloons – No party is complete without balloons. Thankfully you can still ensure your party goes off with a ‘bang’ by decorating the space around your eco table with brightly coloured balloons made from latex and tied with ribbons coloured with natural dyes.

Eco Materials for Decorating Your Eco Home

Eco Materials for Decorating Your Eco Home

One of the ways you can make your eco house as environmentally friendly as possible is to decorate it using natural eco materials. Whether it’s the type of glass, paint or wood varnish you use, there are plenty of eco materials you can use for smartening up your eco home and looking after the environment at the same time.

Using eco materials is also beneficial for the construction industry because they’re easy and cheap to produce. Eco materials contain natural, rather than synthetic, substances, so they can be harvested over and over again. And because they’re also biodegradable they can be easily disposed of, rather than pollute the earth after being dumped in a landfill site.

Eco Glass

Eco glass generally comprises of 95% recycled glass and plastic, and can be used as a hard wearing surface for kitchen worktops. Eco glass worktops are available in a range of finishes to resemble marble, quartz or granite, and match conventional glass for practicality and style.

Eco fabrics

Natural eco fabrics are the environmentally friendly alternative to synthetic cloth because they’re made from renewable plant fibres. The two most popular eco fabrics are cotton and jute (also called hessian), and other types include hemp, recycled polyester, organic leather, wool, felt and fair trade silks.

Eco fabric can be used for armchair coverings, carpets, curtains and rugs in your eco home. As well as being more environmentally friendly and biodegradable, eco fabrics are more breathable than synthetic cloth.

Eco Paints

Conventional lead based paint emits harmful chemicals into the air, such as pesticides, herbicides and toxins, which are referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOC). These chemicals are damaging to the environment and people’s health. In fact, conventional paint is blamed for causing asthma, chest complaints and sick building syndrome.

Eco paints, on the other hand, contain fewer or no toxins at all, in which case they’re labelled as being VOC free. Eco paints are odourless and popular types are milk, plant, water or soy based, rather than lead.

If anybody in your family suffers from asthma or other breathing problems then you should consider switching to using eco paint to decorate your eco home.

Eco varnish

When decorating wooden surfaces in your eco home, you should consider using varnish with a natural, rather than synthetic, resin. Conventional synthetic varnishes contain acrylic, vinyl and algid, which are environmentally damaging to manufacture and dispose of.

Eco varnishes, however, contain a plant based resin. Popular types contain resin from dammar, copal and rosin trees. Eco varnishes are therefore more environmentally friendly to manufacture because the resin can be harvested over and over again, making them the green friendly eco material for protecting wooden surfaces in your eco home.