Jubilee 2012. Celebrating or cashing in?

Everyone is talking about the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, which will take place in a flurry of bunting, flags and cake over the weekend of 2, 3, 4 and 5 June.

Does this mean we’re all patriotic royalists, or are we just looking forward to a long weekend? I think it’s a bit of both.

After the royal wedding last year and the high profile work of the younger royals, the royal family do seem to be popular at the moment, and not just because we’re all getting a couple of days off.

And it’s hard not to be impressed by the Queen, well into her eighties and still working hard.

Of course, along with a celebration like this, there’s lots of opportunities for Jubilee merchandise, and Jubilee ‘stuff’: almost every shop in my home town of Brighton has a display of union Jacks, bunting and corgis.

As a retailer we understand that shops need to take every opportunity to boost sales. Especially at the moment when times are tough.

However, we’re not just a retailer, we’re a resourceful retailer.  It’s not that we’re not looking forward to the Jubilee weekend, it’s just that we think it would be a shame to encourage to people to buy lots of throwaway decorations and paper plates and cups, that will only get used once, then chucked out.

So we asked our customer for a few tips for a low-impact, resourceful street party, that will still be lots of fun.

• Make your own bunting: you don’t need expert sewing skills, and making recycled bunting from donated material from your community will be so much more meaningful than something bought new.
• Persuade neighbours to lend plates, cups and cutlery, or  help out a local charity shop by buying from them, and re-donating when the party’s over.
• Don’t forget to recycle: get the local kids involved in creating some colourful recycling bins, and people will be much more likely to use them. And the more people recycle, the less clearing up to do at the end.

For more ideas about what to do for the Jubilee, check out The Big Lunch and find out more having a street party.

Are you having an eco street party? Tell me your tips for keeping it resourceful in the comments.

This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 at 2:24 pm and filed under Good things to do, Recycling. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.