It’s important to remember, during the stress of planning a wedding during a
pandemic, that it will still be one of the happiest days of your life. You'll look over the
pictures of happy memories for years to come, and all the stress and worry that led
up to it will be forgotten.
But, when you look at these pictures, imagine how much better it will feel to know
that you helped the planet on your big day. The time has come for green weddings.
Here are some reasons why you should think about lowering your carbon footprint
on your big day.
The wedding industry can be wasteful
With all the confetti throwing, unused food, excessive gifts, and single-use plastics in
decoration and dining, weddings have the potential to be quite wasteful.
Unrecyclable plastic is one of the biggest offenders, as one wedding alone can easily
produce 20kg of this. Swapping to sustainable materials and using eco-friendly
catering companies can make a huge difference. If you’re unsure about how
sustainable a catering company is, it’s always worth asking them – if they’re truly
sustainable they’ll be happy to shout about their credentials, and show you the
relevant certificates.
The wedding industry is also carbon-intensive
Each wedding also uses around 63 tonnes of CO2. Electricity, heating costs and fuel
consumption to get to the venue all contribute to this. To change this, you could opt
for eco-conscious venues, or encourage ride-sharing to get to the venue and move
between ceremony and reception.
The stats are quite eye-opening – they show that one wedding, on average, uses the
same amount of emissions that 4-5 people use in a year. It' tempting to think that
it's just one day, and that it won’t make a big difference, but thousands of people get
married every day and it all adds up! If we are trying to have a more eco-conscious
lifestyle, weddings are a great start.
There are some fantastic sustainable wedding businesses
There are some great green wedding businesses out there who have eco-
friendliness at the core of their ethos. Most of these businesses are small, bespoke
companies who really care about each and every customer they work with.
Committing to a green wedding gives you the chance to work with some of these
fantastic businesses. Plus, these companies will be the ones that survive the green
movement and beyond – you might have the opportunity to work with some future
leading brands in their infancy!
As we can see, weddings can have a big impact on the environment and it’s a good
idea to start introducing some green initiatives to lessen the carbon footprint of our
big day. This can seem like a daunting process, and it may be unrealistic to make
our weddings completely carbon neutral. But there are still some small and
achievable steps we can take. Luckily for us, there are plenty of guides available
online to help us plan every detail of our greener wedding day.
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