Coronation

With lots of community street parties and Coronation lunches planned to celebrate His Majesty The King’s Coronation, please also remember to reduce, reuse and recycle. We've pulled together a guide to making your party or celbrations a little more eco-friendly.

Pass the plate

Consider what tableware you'll need. Millions of single-use plates & cutlery are used every year in the UK, with only 10% being recycled. So why not avoid the hassle & extra waste by asking everyone to bring their own cutlery, plates & bowls? Or you could hire a Eco-party kit with reusable tableware, find your nearest here.

Food & Drink

Most food waste comes from the home, and parties can lead to even more waste. Visit Love Food Hate Waste for exciting leftover lunch recipes

If everyone brings a dish, you will avoid making too much food and if there are any leftovers guests can easily take them home again. 

Instead of using miles and miles of cling film, which can't be recycled, use food storage tubs or old takeaway containers instead. You can take them home, wash them and use them again. If you do need to cover food, use tin foil, you can recycle it afterwards as long as it isn't covered in food. 

Decorations

A street party or coronation wouldn't be the same without bunting. It doesn't need to be plastic, or shop bought. Fabric offcuts, ribbons, felt, paper, whatever you have to hand can look great, as long as you keep to red, white and blue.

The team running the Eden Project Communities have suggested a great idea for decorating your own street party tablecloth. Use an old tablecloth, bedding sheet or even the back of unwanted wallpaper rolls and get creative with fabric pens, markers or paint. This makes for a great community activity either before or during the event.

Plan for after the party

The best way to reduce the impact of your event is to plan ahead for what you will do with the rubbish that is left. Make sure there are plenty of rubbish and recycling bins for people to use & clearly labelled. The more you can keep materials separate, the easier it will be to recycle afterwards.

• For any leftover food which is still edible, encourage neighbours to take home leftovers, share via Olio or donate to local organisation, such as a Community Fridge
• Put some kitchen food caddies out for people to scrape leftovers and uneaten food. This can then be put out for recycling on the next collection day. 
• Organise for people to take down the decorations afterwards to save them blowing away or falling apart and becoming litter. You could store them for another party or donate them to a community group.
• Encourage friends and neighbours to do a quick litter pick after the party. You can enter all the litter picked up into LitterLotto and might just win a prize to make the Coronation even more memorable.

• For more tips on freezing sandwiches and other foods download a FREE copy of Kate at The Full Freezer's guide.

Recycling and rubbish

If you follow the tips and advice above you should have the extra waste separated and most of it can be recycled. You can put extra recycling like paper, card, plastic bottles next to your recycling bin ready for the next collection day. Our crews will take extra recycling, so it's worth the effort to keep it clean and separate. If you are not sure if you can recycle something, check out our Waste Wizard to see what goes where.

There may still be some extra non-recyclable rubbish. If you have too much to fit in your bin, please bring it to your nearest Household Recycling Centre. The collection crews will be struggling with heavy bins after the jubilee and cannot take extra rubbish outside of the wheelie bins. The Household Recycling Centres are opne every Bank Holiday and during the Coronation, with no changes to opening hours.