With this new year racing past us and the entire planet asking for our help to survive for the future, there’s no other way forward with any wedding without trying your best to make it one that helps our planet, rather than add to its problem. There’s a lot that you can do to plan for a more sustainable wedding. But before you can move forward with planning with effective eco-friendly wedding tips, it’s important to first understand how a wedding event contributes to environmental problems on this planet.
Ways that Weddings Contribute to Environmental Problems
These are the most traditional and loved wedding practices that are actually quite harmful to the health of the planet. It’s important to be aware of what you should avoid if you want to follow eco-friendly wedding tips.
Producing Excessive Waste that Adds to the Pollution
There is an estimate that on average, every wedding produces up to 400lbs of garbage per event. This is all from just one event. This may seem like a shock to you, but if you really do think about it, it’s not that surprising. Imagine all of the paper used, the decorations, the ribbons, the confetti, the balloons, the menus, and all of the plastic that will all just be thrown away at the end of the day. A wedding produces incredibly large volumes of garbage that are not healthy for the environment.
Producing Excessive Volumes of Carbon Dioxide
This may not seem like a big deal to anyone as it isn’t something that people can physically see for themselves. This is the unfortunate reason why a lot of people do not take the production of carbon dioxide seriously when it comes to its effects on the climate. It is, in fact, one of the leading causes of global warming and all of the negative effects this has on the planet. Weddings are big contributors to this problem as one average wedding is known to produce more than 60 tons of Carbon Dioxide. From all the vehicles used at weddings that emit carbon dioxide, to all the electricity used that is harvested from the burning of fossil fuels (which emit carbon dioxide). The emission of CO2 is an alarming amount for every wedding event.
If you can change certain practices at your wedding that will help reduce these contributing factors to environmental problems, then it can make the biggest difference. These following eco-friendly wedding tips will help guide you to become a pioneer with these eco-friendly practices that can change the way you and your guests treat events in the future.
Eco-friendly Wedding Tips
Weddings are wonderful events but are, unfortunately, known to be an occasion that’s notorious for leaving a whole lot of waste behind that no one really ever discusses. Just imagine feeding 100 people, how much plastic garbage is used. Just think of the number of straws used. Even the travel time of every guest adds to air pollution. These eco-friendly wedding tips aim to minimize the amount of pollution your wedding produces on the day.
Send Digital Invitations
Most people may think that using organic paper and avoiding any plastic when making their wedding invitations is enough to make it eco-friendly. Unfortunately, all that does is make your invitations easier to decay and does not reduce any of the contributing factors to climate change that happens when you send wedding invitations.
If you really want to make a big difference in the way you send your invitations, you should send digital invitations or create a website for your guests to visit. Using paper will still require the actual burning of fuel as this is transported by a vehicle or air travel. The burning of fuel is significantly worse for the planet. Sending digital invitations is the best way to reduce any waste and pollution added to the atmosphere. Using organic paper will not hurt either.
Hire a Wedding Shuttle
A big contributing factor that greatly accelerates the process of global warming is the emissions every car releases into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, you can’t exactly ask your guests to not use cars or airplanes to get to your wedding. What you can do is to hire a wedding shuttle that will serve to transport all of your wedding guests from one venue to another. It’ll reduce the number of cars that would usually be used for the day of your wedding. Plus, you don’t have to worry about parking. Using one car to do all of the work will help a lot. This could make the biggest difference in the impact your wedding has on the environment.
Give Reusable Straws and Utensils as a Wedding Token
You can have somewhere between 50 to 500 people going to your wedding. If you can give them all their own reusable straws and utensils as gifts, and teach them how easy it is to choose to use this in their everyday routines, it can really make the biggest difference. You’ll be able to give them the opportunity to reduce how much waste they produce, and this is a gift that can last a long time. It’s a wedding token that your guests will definitely appreciate. It’s definitely a good step towards following effective eco-friendly wedding tips.
Order in Bulk and Online
Driving around trying to buy everything from one store to another is not a good idea. Try to avoid using too much of your car or burning too much gasoline if you want to have a more eco-friendly wedding. Instead, choose to order everything in bulk and online. From your liquor to your decorations, down to your wedding rings, you can all get these online. Order your wedding ring directly from Brillianteers to have them shipped to you immediately, anywhere around the world.
Ask Guests to Wrap Your Gifts with Recycled Paper
You may not know this, but when it comes to gift-giving events and seasons (such as weddings and Christmas), the new wrapping paper every person uses to wrap gifts is only used once but requires so many materials and resources to make. After the one use, these go back to the planet in the form of garbage, and thus, adds more to the pollution. It’ll be a big help to the environment if you ask all of your guests to use recycled wrapping paper, or any other type of old paper, to wrap your wedding gifts. It makes the biggest difference if you can help your guests adopt habits such as this, to take more eco-friendly actions, starting with your wedding.
Use Eco-friendly Decorations and Lighting
You’d want to avoid using too much electricity on your wedding day as this definitely adds to the climate problem (unless you can guarantee that your electricity is sourced from greener solutions such as solar or wind power). The same goes for the decoration you use too. Avoid using plastic at all costs. Try your best to use up-cycled materials for your decorations and of course, to use lighting solutions that are environmentally friendlier. Try using more candles, rechargeable candles or solar-powered lights. Get creative with your lighting and decorations.
Use Local Produce and Services
You would want to avoid hiring services or choosing dishes that require ingredients to be transported from far away places if you want to keep your wedding as eco-friendly as possible. As previously mentioned, there’s a lot of carbon dioxide produced at weddings. One way this happens is when a lot of vehicles are used to provide certain products or services for your wedding day. Having tuna transported all the way from Japan to New York, or asking a wedding photographer to fly from one side of the country to another, will definitely add up in CO2 emissions.
Focus on hiring local produce and services. Look for ingredients that are near to your venue. Hire vendors, from your florist to your wedding singer, that are local to your venue’s location. You will not only help reduce the CO2 emissions your wedding may produce, but you will also save a lot more money on your actual wedding expenses.
Book an Eco-Friendly Venue
As much as you want to follow these eco-friendly wedding tips, if you are to book a wedding venue that does not believe or practice the same ideas as you, then it’ll all be a waste of time. You’ll want to make sure that the venue that you hire does their part as an events center, to be more environmentally conscious and responsible. It can be as simple as segregating garbage the right way and doing their part in reducing the plastic pollution that goes into the ocean. The more eco-friendly your venue is, the more eco-friendly your wedding will be.
Final Thoughts
The smallest changes to your wedding plans can make the biggest difference in your wedding’s contribution to climate change and pollution. You’ll never know, these eco-friendly wedding tips may just be the first steps towards making a bigger difference with your own habits, as well as encouraging your own wedding guests to follow these environmentally-conscious practices even after your wedding. Every little step goes a long way.