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Photo by Tanapot Wisassinthu
It’s a once in a lifetime event that can make a bigger impact in one day than the couple throwing the wedding can in one year.
At 63 tons of CO2, the average wedding produces a carbon footprint larger than the average American couple’s yearly footprint which, according to Brighter Planet, runs at about 48 tons of CO2.
The wedding event itself is actually a minor player in the contributing to a wedding’s carbon emissions — only about one ton of CO2 or less. The biggest contributor is travel by friends and family flying or driving to the wedding, followed by the energy used by hotel rooms.
So what can couples do to lessen their wedding’s impact?
The most effective way is to cut down the guest list.
Another option is to purchase carbon offsets, which allows couples to have a zero carbon or carbon neutral wedding.
A number of companies like San Francisco-based TerraPass, CarbonFund.org, and Brighter Planet all have wedding specific carbon footprint calculators that you can use to estimate your wedding’s carbon emissions.
They allow you to buy preset packages depending on the size of your wedding. Or you can estimate carbon output by inputting the number of guests, flights cars, and total hotel room nights.
Calculating Actual Carbon Footprint
However, if you really want to calculate the actual carbon footprint of your wedding, you can now get into the nitty gritty of literally each and every detail using Sourcemap.org.
Introduced at last month’s Greener Gadgets Conference by Leonardo Bonanni of the MIT Media Lab, Sourcemap was billed as an open source project that is “a wiki-like social network and tool for life cycle assessment and supply chain transparency.”
So what does that really mean? And how can this be used for weddings?
Sourcemap can literally map out or show you where stuff comes from like the components of a typical laptop computer and, thus, give its carbon footprint.
On the flip-side, with Sourcemap you can make your own maps and, say, measure the exact carbon footprint of each guest traveling from his or her home to your wedding, as well as all the dinner ingredients that travel to your wedding reception.
Check out the sourcemap for the Lyons-Oneil Wedding which seems to calculate the footprint of the food used at the wedding by mapping the farms where each ingredient came from.
As mentioned, this is getting into the really nitty gritty, but does finally make it possible to know exactly what impact your big day will make.
Please feel free to contact Patti with questions or to share your Greener Ever After™ tips and stories. Email: patti@greenereverafter.com Facebook: Greener Ever After Twitter: SFGreenWeddings
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