How To Have A Green(er) New Years Celebration

New Years Eve marks one of the biggest celebrations.  Countries all across the map celebrate all the happenings of the past year and look forward to another year of possibilities.

Utilizing a special kind of backwards logic, many people embrace this gift of new beginnings by raging until the early hours of the morning, often not remembering large chunks of the previous night. I am not one to challenge "tradition," but one of the casualties of this rockstar lifestyle choice is the waste that is generated from this careless attitude.

While having fun this NYE, here are some things that you can do to minimize your ecological footprint:

If you are serving beer, buy a keg instead of multiple cases.

Kegs are reusable as well as more economical.  The only clean up that you are left with are the dishes if you are using reusable cups. 

Buying multiple cases of beer is wasteful because you doubling your waste by having to get rid of cans as well as cardboard cases. As much as I would like to believe that you would recycle all of the waste, the last thing on many drunk people's minds is the proper disposal of garbage, which brings me to my next point...

Provide more recycling bins than trash bins.

Lets face it. People suck at recycling, and they only get worse when they are drunk. I have had parties where I asked people to recycle, and instead they decided that the best place to toss their empties were in a lamp shade.

By providing multiple blue recycling bins and not too many trash cans, people won't have much of a choice to recycle.  The only trick is that you have to make sure that the cups you are handing out are recyclable, but that isn't too difficult.

86 the confetti.

I get it. Confetti is a large part of the NYE tradition. According to the zero amount of research that I did, the tradition of tossing confetti at midnight stems from when ticker-tape parades were cool.

This was exciting stuff in the early 1900s. You know what else was exciting? Dressing like this.

I think it is time we start making some traditions of our own that don't involve shredding countless pounds of paper just to be thrown in the air. Every year they say they are able to clean this up, but I'm calling shenanigans because there is no way they get all of it.

Rent a limo with other people or use public transportation.

The vast majority of people go to hotels or other venues to ring in the new year. Aside from the obvious point to not drink and drive, it benefits the environment when you share rides or use public transportation.

Less cars on the road means less carbon being emitted into the atmosphere.