ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Last year close family friends Anne and James decided to get married. The wedding was going to be held on Anne’s parent’s property in the bush a few hours north of Brisbane. My brother and I live in Sydney so the first question was how do we get there? Being avid campers my brother and I decided to make a big road trip of the event. Rather than fly, we would drive up to the wedding, camping at national parks along the way.

Thinking about the drive up, I began to wonder about the possibility of offsetting our long drive. My brother suggested we go one step further. As a gift, was there some way we could make the couple’s special day ‘greener’? They were after all both active environmentalists and bushwalkers; they even met on a bushwalk!

With more thought, we decided to offset the entire wedding!

What better gift for a green couple than knowing that their wedding would have no greenhouse emissions and not contribute to damaging the environment they loved so much.

I calculated that in total the wedding emitted 27 tonnes of greenhouse gases, about 4 times the annual emissions of an average Australian home. A whopping 64% of these emissions were due to flights. In fact 31% of all the greenhouse emissions were due to 2 members of the groom’s family flying in from Copenhagen for the special day.

The rest of the emissions were due to guests driving to the wedding (27%), guests staying at hotels for the wedding (7%) and the wedding reception (2%). There were no emissions associated with the wedding ceremony as it was held outdoors, under the shade of gum trees on the banks of the Noosa River.

The next question was what carbon offset credits to buy? As the couple are keen bushwalkers we decided to go with carbon credits generated from tree-planting (though admittedly there are some issues related to tree-planting to reduce greenhouse emissions).

I’m happy to say the couple were surprised and over-joyed at their unique gift. The most special day of their lives was carbon neutral, and somewhere in Australia a patch of dirt would be regenerated with native plants that would continue to grow, thrive and prosper alongside their marriage.

Gareth Huxham
Huxham Sustainability Solutions
www.huxham.com.au