Waste Free Celebrations

Values

About

Emma Conyngham, the founder of Waste-Free Celebrations started out selling reusable gift bags for Christmas at the local Wanaka market in 2020. The demand was so big that she decided to launch into other reusables to take the waste out of gift-giving, as well as making reusable Christmas crackers – a beloved but shockingly wasteful product. 

After turning Central Otago upside down searching for enough sewers to make their reusable bags and re-crackers, Waste Free Celebrations eventually turned to a group of Afghan former refugees in Auckland. 

Now – working together with NFACT (New Settlers Families and Community Trust) – they have a team of women sewing for them, including former refugees in Auckland as well as disabled women, solo mums, and pensioners in Central Otago. 

The sewing teams are visited regularly by Emma and other team members. 

“This is our cornerstone of production! We work with women in their own homes so they can work around children, elderly parents, or work schedules.” 

One achievement Emma is super proud of is finding generous sponsors to buy brand new industrial machines for these women to help give them a leg up in their new lives here in NZ. In Auckland, their former refugee team is not just sewing the products, but learning to manage their own contract sewing businesses.

In addition to empowering women workers, Waste Free Celebrations is also living up to its original mission – taking care of the planet. 

Their reusable gift bags and crackers are made from digitally printed cotton which is environmentally much better than cheaper screen-printed cotton (less ink consumption and water pollution). 

As a company, they also manage their waste – turning all their machine waste into Christmas tree ornaments. 

“Kiwis produce 30% more waste at Christmas than any other time of year and our goal is to reduce this to zero.”

Waste Free Celebrations offers all its products for school and club fundraising initiatives. They issue a code to be used at checkout that allocates 40% of the total price to be given to your chosen charity. Their Re-cracker refill packs also contain donation tokens so that when a lucky person pops that cracker, money is given to charity.