Monday, November 26, 2007

Environmentally Responsible Weddings

Weddings in general, but especially destination weddings, can have a significant environmental impact. Sad, but true. It is important to try and minimize your environmental impact, both for your own personal satisfaction and for future generations.

One way to do this is through carbon offsets or carbon credits. According to Wikipedia: “Carbon credits are a key component of national and international emissions trading schemes… There are also many companies that sell carbon credits to commercial and individual customers who are interested in lowering their carbon footprint on a voluntary basis.” Carbon credits have received some criticism lately (and there have been some scams), so it’s important to do business with a reputable firm.

Essentially it works like this – you pay a little money to a company or nonprofit group to offset some aspect of your life (your car, your household energy use, etc.). The company or nonprofit uses the money to fund projects that generate environmentally-friendly power (i.e., wind power, methane, etc.) – these are projects that aren’t likely to be built, except with the support of people like you and us. The carbon credits are relatively inexpensive and range from $2-15 per month, or $25+ per year.

We are fans of two groups offering this service. The first is a non-profit organization called CarbonFund.org. They also offer a special ZeroCarbon Wedding – an 8-ton carbon offset, for $44. This is tax deductible. The second company is Native Energy. They are for-profit company, but specialize in building new projects (and actually offer specifics on the projects they fund).

We fully appreciate that weddings are expensive and this is probably one time in your life that you don’t have extra money laying around to buy carbon credits. Doing this is important. Please consider it.



No comments: