Green Your Wedding -- Buy Offsets

Getting hitched? Here's the third of five great ways to make the big day a big win for you, your guests, and the environment.

Tip #3: If you can't green 'em, offset 'em.

Will you have hundreds of guests taking planes, trains, and automobiles to your wedding? If so, your wedding could have the carbon footprint of a small nation. But since you’ve already sent out the invitations and booked the caterer, it’s probably too late to call of the wedding. Instead, offset it--with three easy steps:

1. Go to a Web site such as TerraPass.com or CarbonFund.org
2. Use the site's calculator to estimate how much greenhouse-gas emissions will be produced by your guests' travel
3. Purchase carbon offsets for the travel emissions or provide guests with the link and a request to buy their own

The money funds projects like clean energy developments and landfill gas capture, which help reduce the total amount of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. Ready to look at more than travel emissions? Both TerraPass and The Carbon Fund give you tools to offset the entire event.

--M.F.

Comments

[Julis Sujai]

Great Post! I especially found it useful where you stated. So romantic.

[Matt]

There are many great sites that offer to offset your wedding. Several of the smaller offset providers just have an event calculator instead of having one dedicated to just weddings. The event calculator is the same thing! You can check out more about carbon offsetting on my blog

Matt

[carol]

For a first wedding, I'd still want gifts. For a second, or if you're already well stocked in household items, I'd ask the guests to buy thee offsets in lieu of a gift!

[Nick]

One of my Friends had their Wedding at a location close to most of their relatives, to minimize both travel expenses and carbon footprint.

[Monique]

While buying offsets is better than nothing, promoting it as one big way address the carbon footprint of a wedding makes me cringe. I have a strong feeling that recipients of this post are well aware of the ability to buy offsets. We need more concrete advice other than writing a check to another carbon broker to make up for our lifestyles. It is setting the wrong tone. Again the readers of this post need more (I am top of that list - HELP me alter my life style for real).