More eco-friendly welcome bags?

Welcome bags aren't strictly necessary, so you could forgo them. If you really want to do something, you could do some sort of reusable bottles - but that's going to run to more money.

Skip the bags altogether. It’s really not something you have to do.

If you’re set on giving a drink / doing the bags, you could do the cartons of water.

Like Givemeallthepups mentioned, I found these on Amazon that may work! ❤️

For drinks you could find something packaged in glass bottles instead of plastic. For water, not sure if there are many options out there to purchase in glass bottles, but you could buy bottles in bulk and prefill them. Or include a reusable water bottle in the gift bag. Just some ideas, I’m also interested in being as sustainable as possible for my wedding so following this thread

Skip the bags and save your money

Many weddings do not have these and they are not missed.

Water in a cardboard carton could work, I've had that before. Or a reusable water bottle.

Unless you have already purchased items for the welcome bags, I would just skip them. We didn't do them for our wedding and none of our guests missed them.

I love the idea of making it more eco friendly! Like what others have said you can skip the bottle entirely.

Our wedding is about a 2 hour drive for most people so I do think the welcome bags are a nice touch, but definitely agree that the most sustainable option would be to just skip them.


I’ve heard about Boxed Water! It’s a good idea, but I’m pretty sure the cartons are still lined with plastic and are actually harder to recycle than regular plastic bottles (our town recycling doesn’t take cartons at all).
I did find glass bottled water but it was very expensive, so I don’t think it’s worth it. Plus, I feel like I don’t want to risk any shattered glass.
I think if I spent the money on reusable bottles, guests might still just throw them away. Then that would end up being more wasteful since more plastic is used to make those than bottled water.
Looking into canned water now! Aluminum is usually recycled at least, where as most of our recycled plastic still just ends up in the trash (landfill or incinerated depending on where you live) since China stopped buying it from us. I’ll see if I can find any affordable brands to share!

Here are the ones I found! I think I’ll probably go with c4wk since it’s the cheapest and donates most of their money. I would rank Open Water second as Koz is a little vague on their cause (haha).

CannedWater4Kids (cW4k) - canned water, most affordable, $24.95 for 24 cans -95% of the money from each sale helps support, fund, and deliver sustainable, clean drinking water solutions that save the lives of children worldwide, classified as nonprofit

Koz water - canned water, $29.99 for 24 cans, a portion of profits are donated to help expand and encourage recycling programs the US

Open Water - canned (or resealable), $34.99 for 24 cans - carbon neutral, women owned, 1% for the planet member

In our area, we can’t recycle glass, only plastic. I have no idea why but even the fancy organic grocery store had to stop taking glass for recycling (they have an area you can drop off your recycling. Plastic bottles may be best, but def not bags.
I’m only doing welcome bags for out of town guests and will get reusable shopping bags.