Green, Ethical and Eco-friendly Weddings

My wife and I have been using microfiber cloths for cleaning around the house, and I’M IN LOVE with these cloths! Use these cloths with water only, no chemical cleaners are necessary! I cleaned the shower door yesterday (soap scum and hard water residue); the cloth cleaned so easily - water only and it came out clean and shiny! They polish chrome amazingly well, the windows are cleaner then ever, and I can see through my glasses! When they get dirty, throw them in the wash - they can be reused hundreds of time. Seriously, spend $5 or $6 buck to try them out - you’ll never go back to chemical cleaners.

I’m helping our local Green Party candidate Randy Weeks in Canada’s federal election coming up on October 14. If you live in the Calgary West riding, check out Randy’s web site (as created by yours truly), or check out the Green Party of Canada web site for more info on policies, etc. Or click here for the US Green Party web site. The Green Party, at least in Canada, is gaining a lot of traction as a viable alternative to the other three parties.

Don’t forget about the CameraRenter.com contest - enter for the chance to save 80% on a digital camera rental package. The contest closes on September 30, so get your entry in ASAP!

In the past, I’ve talked to brides who decided not to go with an organic wedding dress because, in their words, the designs were boring or frumpy.

They haven’t seen these dresses.

(Photo from Wai-Ching via the BluePlanetWedding.com photo pool on Flickr. All rights reserved by Chrissy Wai Ching)

If you’re looking for an organic/low impact wedding dress, you owe it to yourself to check out these eco-friendly wedding dresses by Chrissy Wai-Ching.

I’m not 100% positive every piece in the collection has been made from organic materials; check with the studio if you’re interested in a particular dress.

Being male, I’m not a real expert on wedding dress fashion, but as the bearer of a ‘Y’ chromosome, all I can say is “yowza”.

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Don’t forget about the chance to save 80% off a digital camera rental package from CameraRenter.com. Enter the draw here!

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Got photos from your eco-friendly wedding? Share them with the community on the BluePlanetWedding.com Flickr Group.

CameraRenter.com is offering all the visitors at BluePlanetWedding.com the chance to save 80% off a $495 digital camera rental package. That’s a saving of $386 - pay only $99.

Enter the draw here

Enter until September 30, 2008; CameraRenter.com will draw 1 lucky name for this great saving in early October. CameraRenter.com’s only request is that your wedding is after October 18, 2008 so that they have time to get the cameras to you.

Learn about CameraRenter.com, digital camera rental, and renting digital cameras instead of disposables for your wedding here

Emily Anderson, author of Eco-Chic Weddings and eco wedding blogger extraordinaire, writes about not having a green- or eco-themed wedding. And I agree completely. Um, OK, but doesn’t that go against everything we stand for?

For me, this is not about a theme…it’s about a way of being. Saving resources, including your time and money, and enjoying the process is what it’s all about.  ~ Emily Anderson

Living a more sustainable lifestyle, of which getting married is part of the lifestyle, is not about a theme or a gimmick - it’s about making changes in your life that are better for the planet. There’s not a lot of point in having a green wedding if you don’t carry that philosophy over into your daily life.

And keep it simple, friends. There’s a whole lot of beauty in simplicity.

Try as you might, the perfect eco-friendly wedding is pretty hard to do. Having a carbon neutral wedding is quite easy.

Weddings, especially destination weddings or weddings with many out-of-town guests, can generate several tons of carbon; some estimates put the average wedding at 50 tons of carbon (other estimates put it at a significantly lower 15 tons, but it’s still a lot of carbon), considering the average North American household generates between 12 to 20 tons per year. That’s a lot of carbon for a 1 day event.

Calculate your wedding carbon footprint with CarbonFund.org’s Wedding Carbon Footprint Calculator.

It’s really tough to do the perfect zero-footprint wedding, and to be honest, you’d be making a lot of sacrifices that you may not be willing to make. It’s still your wedding, and it’s a (hopefully) once in a lifetime event.What can you do? Make your wedding as green as possible, and buy carbon offsets to take care of the rest.

What are carbon offsets?

Basically, when you buy a carbon offset, you are funding projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These projects include things like reforestation, building wind power generation farms, funding geothermal power projects, increasing the energy efficiency of transportation, and so on.

However, not all carbon offset credits are created equal. The best carbon credits are the Gold Standard credits:

“The Gold Standard is widely considered to be the highest standard in the world for carbon offsets. It ensures that key environmental criteria have been met by offset projects that carry its label. Significantly, only offsets from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects qualify for the Gold Standard, as these projects encourage a shift away from fossil fuel use and carry inherently low environmental risks. Tree planting projects are explicitly excluded by The Gold Standard.” ~ The David Suzuki Foundation

Even though the gold standard is, well, the gold standard, there are lots of other good carbon offset credits available. Look for an offsetter that’s certified or monitored buy a third-party organization like the Chicago Climate Exchange, the Environmental Resources Trust or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Clean Development Mechanism.

For a long technical paper comparing carbon offsets, click here (pdf), or check out this list of carbon offset credit providers.

Offsetting your wedding

For about $10/ton, you can offset your wedding and support green initiatives around the world. Several organizations have wedding carbon calculators, and if you offset your wedding, they will send you a certificate that you can add to your wedding memorabilia album.

Check out the following organizations for wedding carbon offset credits:

CarbonFund.org ZeroCarbonâ„¢ Weddings
Terrapass.com Wedding Terrapass