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What Green is to us :
We bet you’Äôre wondering why we decided to buck tradition in such a large way, and have this event be as socially and environmentally responsible as we can feasibly make it. For us, honestly, it couldn’Äôt be any other way. This is just how we live our lives, what makes sense to us, how we think and what we do.
For us, Green is not a passing fad, not something we try to remember when purchasing a new car or a light bulb, but a day to day way of life. It is so important to us that we want to share it with all of you.
’ÄòGreen’Äô is thrown around a lot these days. Green is marketed with a zeal that constantly surprises us. While we are very glad for the awareness that this beings, and for the fact that this marketing is making Green hip, cool, and trendy, we are also concerned with the extra ’Äòstuff’Äô that is being produced and consumed in the name of being Green. It seems that it will be some time yet before the general populous of this country is ready to understand that using an energy efficient bulb is great, but not turning on the light to begin with is so much better.
So what is Green? Green means working towards sustainability. Green means not using, not consuming, when we can help it. Avoiding use. It means being aware of the products and services we choose when we must, from the manufacture to the places they are advertised to the way they break down when they can no longer be used in any way. Green is about reusing everything we can, repurposing things, from tires to fabric to bottle caps. It is about recycling the things we can not reuse or repurpose. It’Äôs about finding someone who can use something when we can not. Green is about taking the extra time and energy it takes to find out if the store you shop in offers decent, useable, health benefits to their employees, and finding another store to shop in if they don’Äôt.
The often overlooked, and to us, more important, aspect of being Green is the social responsibility. It seems that the environmental activists have been relatively successful, as every school child knows to turn off the water when they brush their teeth, or to turn off a light when they leave the room. We all know at this point that buying organic, local produce is better for the environment, and that drinking bottled water is enormously wasteful.
Not many people seem to think about the fact that not only is that plastic bottle using fossil fuels to make it, the factory polluting, the shipping of if from point A to point B using more fossil fuels and polluting more - but also the workers that made that little bottle may not be earning a livable wage. They may be living in an oppressive country, forced to live at the place they work, and denied access to medical care. Here in the US, those workers may not be able to afford the health insurance they are offered because the costs are just too high, they may have to make choices between paying for gas or electricity because their wages are not keeping up inflation, they may be one of the millions of the working poor in this country. Being aware of these things, informing yourself as much as you can, this too is being Green because being Green is about achieving sustainability, and we need to sustain people too.
What we are doing with regards to the wedding :
A wedding, or any large event from a family BBQ to a professional sporting event, can create quite a large amount of waste. It can consume a huge amount of resources. However, we have the opportunity at the same time to lessen the carbon footprint of our event, and to share with you the reasons for, and the methods of, our individual choices.
We are committed to holding a Zero Waste event. In this vein, all of our ’Äòtrash’Äô will be compostable. Even the trashbags themselves are compostable. The bags of collected compostable materials are slated to be donated to local community farms, helping to create more local produce at an affordable price, and also combating greenhouse emissions.
The venue we chose is an odd one to some, but perfect for us. We decided to have the event, in its entirety, in Braddock. Braddock used to be a thriving community, and it is fighting hard to come back to that. There is still the oldest Carnegie Library still in operation there, and it is still accessible by public transit. They have a community farm, which grows beautiful produce, and sells it at local restaurants and farmers markets. Our ceremony will be held in a reclaimed garden, made by neighbourhood folks, paved with bricks taken from falling down walls nearby. The reception will be held in a building that used to be a church, which was reclaimed and refurbished by the Mayor of Braddock, and is now used for art events, after school programs, and community projects. And, of course, our wedding.
We want to draw positive attention to the efforts being made in the Braddock community, and show people there is a thriving community there fighting to come back. We support and believe in the efforts of non gentrified neighbourhood revitalization. This venue was just perfect for us.
There will be no decorative flowers, no cut plants at all. The farming of vanity flowers is very destructive to the soil and water of the regions they are grown in, as excessively large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used by these farms. In addition, the land, water, and resources used to farm even organically grown vanity flowers couple be better used to farm food. This would contribute to the lowering of food costs, and help to alleviate the world wide food shortages we face. There are flowers that come from plants that are used for food or other things, but no local source could be found in May, in Pittsburgh. For us, clean water, and higher food production, are much more important than pretty flowers.
The choice of single use tableware seems to be completely at odds with our Avoid, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle philosophy. This decision was very difficult for us to make. The specific tableware we picked is fully and easily compostable single use items that break down in about two months. The materials used to make them are waste from making cane sugar into ’Äòraw’Äô sugar. The packaging and shipping of these products is as green as can be logistically achieved. The factory is a Zero Emissions facility. The employees that work there are paid a fair wage, and given access to adequate health care.
All that said, these are still single use items. This is far from ideal. We wanted very much to use reusable tableware, but as the venue has no kitchen, this proved to be a logistical nightmare.
All of the food is completely vegan. This means no animal products whatsoever. No meat. No dairy. No eggs. Our family is vegan, this is the way we eat all of the time. It is important to us, as the farming methods used for the mass production of meat and dairy are harmful to the environment, More importantly, a vast amount of farmland is used to feed the livestock, whereas if it were used to farm food for human consumption, it would feed more people. For every pound of meat we get to the table, 16 pounds of grain and corn are used to feed the animal. That means we could feed people 16 times as much if we didn’Äôt farm livestock in the ways it is farmed today. For us, reducing hunger problems is far more important than eating a piece of chicken.
We are using local vendors and sources for everything that we can find a source or. This reduced shipping waste, and also contributes to the local economy. We are buying local produce where we can find it. Even the beer and wine are from local wineries and breweries.
Whenever possible we are using reclaimed paper products, thing that were to be thrown away or recycled. We plan to fold origami out of these things, make a pinata, making table cards, signs for all manner of things, etc and so forth.
We are also using reclaimed ’Äòwaste’Äô for art projects, sculpture, odd little touches that make the venue look like us.
Simple things you can do to be more Green :
Turn off lights, TVs, DVD players, when we are not using them. Unplugging them will further reduce electric consumption. This is such a small simple thing that most of us do already, and it saves¬Ý as much as 25% of your total electric useage!
Instead of buying bottled water, use a home filter like one of these, and take reusable bottles such as this one. If you do this, you could be saving emissions, fossil fuels, space in landfills, and money.
Use reusable shopping bags like these from my friends at Stay Vocal, instead of using paper or plastic bags provided from the store. Use them for groceries, shopping for the home, clothing, books, trips to the library, anything you would use a bag for. Once you get into the habit or carrying a bag with you, it’Äôs second nature, and not so hard at all. Here is a really great article all about the negative impact of the use of plastics in general, and plastic bags.
Switch to Compact Fluorescent light bulbs in your home. Here are all of the money saving, and carbon footprint reducing benefits of doing so, like saving 30$ on your electric costs over the bulb’Äôs lifetime, and using 70% less energy.
Insulate your electric hot water heater. It’Äôs simple and easy to do yourself on an electric water heater, but if you have a gas water heater, you may want to have a professional install it for you. It can save up to 45% of the heat loss, and 9% on your energy bills.
Buy used products from a local thrift store whenever possible. You’Äôd be amazed at what you can find at thrift stores! Also, check out your local Freecycle group before making purchases, and Freecycle your own unwanted items. Reusing saves money, space in landfills, and energy and resources used to produce new items.
Buy products and services from companies that use environmentally sound manufacturing and shipping processes. Make sure they pay their employees a livable wage, provide safe working conditions, and offer their employees realistic health care options. Avoid stores such as Wal Mart, and support local businesses instead. Yes, you will pay a few pennies to a few dollars more per item, but it is really worth it to support businesses doing the right thing. Be a smart, informed consumer.
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