Green, Ethical and Eco-friendly Weddings

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

I seem to be on a photography streak this week…

Here’s another really cool idea, and a great alternative to the impact and waste of disposable cameras: rent digital cameras for your guests.

Here are a couple of places to rent digital cameras:

CameraRenter.com - all-inclusive packages start at $495

YouShoot.com - starts at about $20/camera

PictureItYourself.com - starts at about $15/camera

Don’t forget to share your pictures in the BluePlanetWedding.com group on Flickr!

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Check out the BluePlanetWedding.com Flickr group - share your green wedding photos, and get ideas from other people’s eco weddings.

As an addition to Monday’s Share all of the wedding photos taken by everyone, Chuck Templeton at Delta Beans put me onto TheWeddingLens.com (a Delta Beans site).

TheWeddingLens.com is a wedding-specific photo sharing site. You and your guests can upload pictures to your album, share the album, print pictures, group and organize your album, leave comments, and so on. Delta Beans, the company behind TheWeddingLens.com has some eco-cred - one of their other projects is GreenBusinessProject.com, information on how to green your business.

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Check out the BluePlanetWedding.com Flickr group - share your green wedding photos, and get ideas from other people’s eco weddings.

One of the hardest parts of the post-wedding wrap-up was getting everyone’s photos together into an album. Dozens of people took pictures, but we only got copies from a small fraction of the guests. We also got a mix of emailed photos, prints, CDs and enlargements, none of which were easily combinable into an album. Mind you, this was in 2003, and traditional film photography wasn’t quite dead yet; here in 2008, it’s very hard to find people still shooting film.

Create a group on Flickr.com

Photo courtesy of Magali deVulpillieres.

My favourite way to share photos between groups of people is to create a group on Flickr.com. It’s easy to do and free, but you’ll probably want to upgrade to a “Pro” account (just my opinion; $24.95/year, or ask for an account as a wedding present - they can be given as gifts). Here’s how to do it, via Flickr.

Your wedding guests can sign up for a free account and upload their own pictures to the group, or take the pictures that are emailed to you and upload them yourself to Flickr.

If you’re concerned about privacy, don’t worry - you can make your group as public or private as you want.

It beats printing out dozens of pictures - anything that can be done digitally is generally better for the planet than physical “stuff”. Plus, it’s much easier to share the albums with a large group of people, and the comments are priceless!

Check out the new BluePlanetWedding Eco Wedding Flickr group. Upload the pictures from your own wedding, wedding ideas, and more, and I’ll be adding my own finds to the group. It’ll take some time to build the group, so in the meantime, enjoy the Green Weddings pool.

There’s a new eco bride blog in town. This Ontario, Canada, -based bride is blogging her wedding plans, and dealing with the ups and downs of planning an eco-friendly wedding.

Follow her eco-wedding plans here, and see what she’s doing for her wedding, which is coming up fairly soon!

Suzan St. Maur’s third wedding book, How To Get Married In Green, is an entertaining green wedding how-to book, covering how to make your wedding eco-friendly and why you should make the green choices.

I really enjoyed Suzan’s ideas on how to have an eco wedding. Her ideas are practical and a lot of fun (check out the recipes for eco drinks!), and the reasons behind going green are clear and sensible. Pick and choose the green elements you want for your wedding - vegetarian meals are not practical for every wedding, for example - Suzan won’t guilt you into making choices you don’t want to make.

Although everyone may argue different aspects of environmentalism - I disagree with using birdseed as confetti, for example, because it can introduce non-native, invasive plant species - the book has many practical examples and is well thought out. I sense the book is written for regular people wanting to make a difference; the hardcore environmentalists may not learn much new here.

The book is full of great internet search terms - you can use the suggested terms to find additional resources, businesses and ideas for your green wedding, and Suzan has a great list of wedding web sites (but not BluePlanetWedding.com - next edition, please?). Suzan lives in England, and the book has a heavy UK bias for the businesses and locations, but this shouldn’t stop you from reading the excellent advice.

Overall, this is a well written, well researched and entertaining guide on green weddings - pick up a copy to help you plan your wedding!

Order the book (Canada)
Order the book (US)
Order the book (UK)

You may notice a minor change today, and a very major change. The minor change is improved navigation of the web site (I hope - let me know if you don’t like it). Find businesses with fewer clicks.The second improvement is huge - all businesses on the site are eco-friendly - we’ve eliminated all non-green businesses! Listings are still free, but ya gotta be green to get in.

Coming up this week (or next…):

Make it frugal, but call it eco. There are a lot of parallels between being frugal and being eco. Get some tips on having a frugal wedding but you can call it an eco wedding.

Getting away. Even if honeymoon travel isn’t the best thing for the environment (don’t forget to offset the travel!), you can go eco at one of these beautiful resorts around the world.

Finally, I’d just like to give a little shout-out to a new group out of San Francisco: The One Love Campaign, a directory of businesses and resources serving same sex weddings in the SF area.

“The website www.theonelovecampaign.com will serve as a beacon of information and a resource for all different types of relationship & wedding services in a network that recognizes all marriages as One Love.”

There’s nothing I don’t like about this idea: place cards on cookies (I am an admitted cookieholic, though). Not only does it take more paper out of the wedding stream, it doubles as a delicious wedding favour. And, with the right bakery, they can be nut-free, gluten-free, organic, or adapted to any need you may have.

(Place card cookies from Sweet Impressions)

Edible place cards can be made out of different foods, including chocolates, candies, cookies, mints and so on. Forgo the wrapping, or use an eco-friendly wrapping for the placecard/favour.

Sweet Impressions is a Winnipeg, Canada, based bakery baking organic cookies; they also offer vegan options. They wrap their baking in biodegradable cellophane and ribbons and they will soon be operating out of a peanut-free facility.

Hmm… stomach’s rumbling… wonder if there are any cookies in the house…

If you’re planning a wedding web site or thinking about blogging about the wedding preparations, check out MomentVille (www.momentville.com). You can create a personal site (choose your own theme), and there are a ton of features, including RSVPs, guestbooks, blogs, photo albums, maps, polls and much more. You’ll like it because it’s free (there’s also a premium level), at BluePlanetWedding.com we like it because it’s carbon-neutral - they pay carbon offests through Tickgreen (www.tickgreen.com).

There’s always a ton of information you need to get out to guests - times, menus, maps, hotels, etc. You can send a thick invitation/information packet, or send an email directing people to a web site. Guess which one is greener? People also love seeing the “behind the scenes” planning - keep them informed by blogging about the plans and ideas.

And if you have a wedding web site or wedding blog, and you have an eco-friendly or ethical side to your wedding, let me know and I’ll link to your site!