New Consumer: July 2007

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Gemma Taylor writes for New Consumer

Little Cherry has launched onto the blossoming market for eco-friendly children's parties.

You can individually handpick items, like its exclusive 100 per cent recycled gift wrap, which is FSC certified and printed using environmentally friendly vegetable dyes, and birthday boys and girls can make a wish with sustainable beeswax candles.

Little Cherry would like all products to be thoroughly green but currently there's not enough choice, especially with themed items, like Barbie or, ironically, jungle, so while the company is continually on the look-out for more eco-friendly replacements, as a result some things are a very pale shade of green.

Like these pirate napkins, which as they are ‘only eco-friendly if you recycle them' it's stretching it to call them eco, considering the natural and unnatural resources that goes into them, to be used for only a couple of hours, before more energy is required to recycle them – so if it's eco you're after perhaps it's best to go with the first ‘R' – reduce – on this item and not bother with them.

The shop does have some great products and good intentions though, and so if you want to pass on working out what's eco and what's not, you can go to the 100 per cent eco-friendly section, where you'll find individual items and also complete recycled or biodegradable party packs.