The Rocca Sisters Blog

Rocca Sisters Tip of the Week: Environmentally-Friendly Entertaining Just in Time for Earth Day!

With spring finally here, you might want to enjoy the shift in the weather by opening up your home and garden to friends and guests. If you are planning on doing any entertaining this spring while keeping an eye on your carbon footprint, the Rocca Sisters Team has you covered with a list of fabulous and “green” ideas that will have you covered from prep to clean up!

1.  Skip paper invites: Not only are e-vites (or invitations electronically delivered by e-mail) more environmentally friendly than their paper counterparts, they are also easily customizable and often free! You can make your own from scratch or use a free service such as Evite, which can help you design your invitation and even keep track of RSVPs.
2. Shop responsibly: We all know that plastic grocery bags are a scourge on our environment, but shopping smart means more than just bringing your own bags. Try to buy products that are packaged in a responsible way, for instance, the wine that comes in a boxed plastic bladder or a tetra pack is more environmentally conscious than buying glass bottles. A 4-Litre box of wine is equivalent to over five glass bottles of wine, and as an added bonus, it stays fresh in its bladder for up to 4 weeks!
3. Decorating: Try to challenge yourself to not buy anything to decorate your home for your event. Use your yard as a natural backdrop, repurpose a colourful bedsheet instead of buying plastic table cloths, or use candles to create a lighting concept. If possible, do not buy or use latex balloons, which cannot be recycled and often end up in a landfill, but instead try making your own Chinese lanterns out of paper. There are some great YouTube videos that can help!
4. Leftovers: If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably lost more good Tupperware in the service of a party than you can count. That’s why now when we buy sour cream, hummus, or indulge in the occasional take-out food, we save the plastic containers and keep them just for these occasions! The containers that once housed your sushi or chicken curry usually aren’t the best quality, making them a perfect vessel for sending leftovers home with your friends, without expecting to get them back. By avoiding packing up leftovers after dinner in Saran wrap or plastic bags, using reusable food containers keeps food fresh while reducing material demand on the environment.
5. Wash the eco-friendly way: After entertaining your guests, make sure you only run the dishwasher when it’s full to save 100 pounds of CO2. The bonus is you’ll also save $40 a year by doing this simple task.

From all of us at the Rocca Sisters Team, we wish you a happy long weekend and a wonderful Earth Day!