More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
A mother has started her own party business with the aim of making celebrations a little bit greener.
Jo Skews, from Paddock Wood, started Keep Partying On after organising her daughter's fifth birthday.
"I didn’t want to use disposable items so I started looking for companies that offered re-usable items locally,"she said.
"I couldn’t find anything, I asked around, researched but nothing.
"So I started thinking about just buying my own and maybe renting it out to others.
"We provide re-usable tableware for parties which saves so much waste going to landfill.
"The party pack is returned dirty to us so we even do the washing up."
Jo supplies her re-usable tableware exclusively to Kent residents.
"It doesn’t really make sense for someone to drive miles and miles to pick up something, that doesn't work with our eco message," said the mum-of-two.
"I’ve also been trying to be more eco-friendly recently and this is just another way to help do my bit for the environment."
Even though some of the tableware is plastic, Jo said this is a compromise worth making.
"This is an initiative to encourage people to reduce waste generally and of course ideally I would do that with bamboo products to target single use plastic specifically, but economics does play a role," she said.
"Using re-usable plastic felt like a compromise if it got more people taking small steps to be kinder to the environment."
Jo is part of a wider community of other sustainable party suppliers called Party Kit Network - a website that helps you find sustainable party supplies near you.
Party Kit Network say for a party for 30 people more than 100 items will end up in landfill.
"Even paper plates cannot be easily recycled because of mixed materials and food contamination," it states.
"Compostable plates will normally only breakdown in industrial composters; so not in your compost at home or in landfill."
