3 Easy Ways To Make Your Parties More Eco-Friendly For Earth Day

April is coming to an end, which means two things. First, warm weather is on the horizon, after a long, bone-chilling winter. Also, Earth Day is right around the corner. As barbecues, pool parties, and summer birthdays kick into high gear, it's important to remember that entertaining can actually be quite wasteful and bad for the environment. There are a lot of quick and easy fixes you can make to make your parties a little greener, and it won't add any time to your schedule or dollars to your budget.

Looking for three quick and easy ways you can make your parties more eco-friendly right now? Check out these quick tips below, and for more information on green entertaining, read 20 Ways to Make Your Parties More Eco-Friendly.

Virtual Invitations
Whether you invite people via text message, email, phone call, or Facebook event, save the paper and the postage and keep your invites in the e-space. Paperless Post has a selection of adorable e-vites that look like paper invitations — and the best part is that a lot of them are free. Not only will keeping your invitations online make your party eco-friendly, it can help you to better track RSVPs.

Invest in Quality, Reusable Party Décor
Instead of buying single-use items, invest in serving platters, banners, tablecloths, vases, and other party staples that you can use over and over again. Etsy has a cute selection of fabric "happy birthday" banners, for instance.

Encourage Recycling and Composting
Instead of throwing all of your waste in a giant trash bag, separate everything into trash, recyclables, and compost. We all know why recycling is good, but composting food scraps and decomposable paper goods helps to enrich the soil with much-needed nutrients.