Low Impact BBQ

Low Impact BBQ

As part of our efforts to be better citizens of the planet, we hosted a low impact BBQ to help spread the word about everyday things that people can do to help lower their impact.

Collecting dirty plates, cups silverware and napkins from the Low Impact BBQ.

Image by Jonathan Hunt

We focussed on reducing the waste generated by the party as well as touching on a few other areas like locally grown produce.  Instead of using the typical disposable plates, cups and silverware (paper or plastic), we used reusable plastic ones for our guests and our standard dinner plates as serving platters.  Also, we used cloth napkins in place of paper towels or paper napkins. 

We had the usual BBQ fair with hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken grilled over charcoal.  To help reduce some of the carbon dioxide from eating all the meat, we also grilled a bunch of vegetables too including zuchinni, onions, corn and eggplant.   

For beverages we skipped the soda bottles and had water, tea and juice and of course cold beer.  We hope to have a friend reuse the bottles for some home brew later this summer.

For the party we asked people to bring left overs or try to get things locally grown or produced.  We stopped a local farm stand to buy some local corn the day before, but unfortunately the previous customer had bought the last ears.

 We and our friends had a great time and the theme was a great excuse to share information about recycling as well as the Energy Smackdown competition for which we are a seed family.  we felt the BBQ was a big success and in the end, with about 20 adults and almost as many kids we ended up with less than half of a kitchen sized garbage can with those items that can't be recycled.  For previous parties of similar size, we normally would have generated 4-5 times as much garbage even after recycling bottles and other stuff.  We ran 2 loads of the dishwasher to clean all the plates, cups and serving platters and just a partial load for the laundry, which we'll throw in with some other towels to make a full load later.

So the next time you are going to throw a party, think about the little things you can do to make it a little greener like using as much reusable stuff as you can and talk with your friends about what everyone can do to have less of a negative impact on the planet.