WITH children’s parties a breeding ground of plastic crap, one Perth mum has declared war on this single-use blight by launching a novel business idea.
Planet Party Kits founder Kat Wray said throwaway plastic from the average kids’ birthday party took more than 400 years to biodegrade.
“As parents of primary school-aged children my neighbour Sally Bruce and I have seen our fair share of plastic,” she said.
Get in front of tomorrow's news for FREE
Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.
READ NOW“Disposable plastic plates, bowls, cups, cutlery, water bottles, juice boxes and party decorations such as balloons all go in the bin and take hundreds of years to biodegrade.
“This party ware will outlive your children’s children.
“We wanted to come up with a better solution.”
Ms Wray said the plastic-free party kit business made it easier for people to host a plastic and waste free party.
“Sally and I had been sharing a party kit for some time, a joint collection of kids’ tableware that we’d use for parties and then I had an idea what if we had a kit like this that we could share with the entire community,” she said.
Ms Wray pitched her idea for Planet Party Kits at Vic Park Soup, a regular micro-granting dinner hosted by the Vic Park Collective as a way to fund creative projects that benefit the community.
“Everybody pays $10 at the door for a bowl of soup and over dinner and they listen to four-minute pitches from locals working on projects that help the community,” she said.
“Each person casts a vote and the winning project goes home with all the cash raised at the door.
“My winnings tallied to more than $1000 which is an amazing seed fund for a little community business aiming to save waste from landfill.”
Ms Wray said she wanted to make refusing single-use plastic and hiring reusable party ware the new norm.
“I get that doing the dishes at the end of the party is probably the last thing you can be bothered doing,” she said.
“This is probably how disposable single-use plastic plates became so popular in the first place.
“Back in the 1950s the advertisements for disposable party ware encouraged throwaway living and was directed towards housewives who were fed up with washing dishes.
“But we now know that our aversion to washing dishes has contributed to an environmental disaster; single-use plastic takes energy and resources to make, only used for a moment, and then takes hundreds of years to break down.”