Green Wedding Planning (Part I)

You all know that we’re finalists in Clay Hill Farm’s Green Wedding Giveaway contest, and as our campaign progresses we’ve been trying to share some advice on how we can all green our everyday lives. You may be wondering how we’ll be greening our wedding, too.  This is something we’ve been pondering for a while, before we knew the contest even existed.  Weddings are a wonderful tradition, and we are so excited to bring our family and friends together to share the most important day in our lives.  However, the multi-billion dollar wedding industry produces a lot of waste, and we do NOT want to share that with our loved ones.

What’s a green couple to do?

The good news is there’s a LOT you can do!  We’ve been scouring the web for information – here’s a portion of what we’ve learned so far (more to come later):

Venue Choice

Problem: Often, ceremonies take place at one location (church, scenic outdoor locale, etc.) while the reception takes place elsewhere, adding to the transportation (and thus energy) demand of the wedding.

Solution: Have your ceremony and reception at the same location, or if you must have separate locations, hire an eco-friendly method of transportation to get you and your guests from one place to the other, rather than having everyone drive separately.  To go further, find a venue that applies green practices as part of their daily business (like Clay Hill Farm!).

Food/Catering

Problem: In this day and age, we can get food from anywhere in the world during any part of the year, but at what cost?  Sure, you want your guests to enjoy a delicious meal, but the carbon footprint of the exotic and out-of-season ingredients in your wedding menu will increase your wedding’s environmental impact.

Solution: Work with your caterer to source locally supplied, seasonal foods, preferably from organic and sustainable farmers within a 100 mile radius of your venue.  This will reduce your carbon footprint and support local, eco-friendly businesses in your community!  What about the leftover food?  Find a local food bank that will accept a donation.

Paper Use

Problem: You might be tired of hearing people tell you to use less paper (and recycle what you do use), but the wedding invitations produced within the US in one year could cover the entire island of Manhattan!  That’s not even counting the Save the Dates, Thank You cards, menus, and programs, yikes!  That's a lot of trees.

Solution: Relax – you can send invitations and still have a green wedding.  Select paper products made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (or tree-free!) and have your invitations printed with environmentally friendly inks and dyes that are widely available in the stationary business nowadays.  If you want to go even greener, send electronic Save the Dates and call your friends and family that are less tech-savvy to communicate the date of your nuptials (this will be our approach).  Odds are your guests will be well aware of the date of your wedding without receiving that trinket in the mail, so go ahead and save those resources AND your money.  If you go the electronic route for your invitations, the tracking of RSVPs is a big headache-saver!

Travel

Problem: This is a big problem for an international couple like us – we’ll be inviting guests from *literally* all ends of the earth, and there will be fossil fuel emissions associated with their travel to Maine for our wedding.  Gulp.

Solution: Other than just eloping to begin with and having zero guests, one option is to provide as much opportunity for carpooling to your guests as possible, perhaps even renting a “green” vehicle to shuttle guests around during your festivities.  To cover the fossil fuel emissions associated with our wedding travel, we will be calculating the carbon footprint of our guests’ flights (to be covered in a future post), then purchasing and retiring carbon offsets on their behalf.

More ideas to come later!

DIY Green Cleaning at Stone Barns with Alexandra Zissu

Saturday was an unexpectedly amazing and inspiring day!  We found out that Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture was having a seminar about making DIY green cleaning products.  After spending time pouring over the labels (and price tags) at our local grocery stores for eco- and budget-friendly products this past week, we were eager to learn about ways to make these on our own, so we signed up!  Apparently we did not read the event description very carefully because we were pleasantly surprised to be taught by the remarkable Alexandra Zissu, co-author of the book “Planet Home,” a green living expert, environmental health journalist, eco consultant, speaker, and mom.  She is extremely knowledgeable on the subject of greening your home, and she encourages and inspires you to make green changes in your daily routines.

Douglas, Alexandra, and Amy

Alexandra discussed with the group the dangers of components found in the mainstream cleaning products and taught us how to make five very useful and green products at home, including: tub scrub, disinfectant spray, glass cleaner, furniture polish, and starch spray (for use when ironing).  She also offered some helpful tips on how to green our homes in the most effective ways, such as ventilating your house, sanitizing only when there’s been an illness or when handling food carrying bacteria, avoiding antibacterial products (especially soaps containing triclosan, an antibacterial and antifungal agent linked to numerous health and environmental concerns).  It was a very educational event, and it made us rethink how we’re going to keep our home clean and green going forward (our commitment: purchase eco-friendly laundry products and make all our own cleaning products, only resorting to mainstream products when our green efforts fail).  Some of the women were saying that when they clean their homes with vinegar (one of the top 5 green cleaning products), their husbands complained of the smell.  Sure, the smell can be strong, but it dissipates rather quickly and it’s something you can easily get used to, especially knowing that you’re preventing the release of toxic chemicals and fumes within your home and the environment.


At the end of the workshop, we told the class about the Green Wedding Giveaway contest and their response was heartwarming.  We explained to them our story, how we found out about the contest, and what we are hoping to do with our community give-back event.  They promised to go home and vote for us; one of the women was so cute, she went to the Stone Barns gift shop and bought Amy a little “blushing bride” pin!  They were very curious about what actions we were taking to make our wedding green (something we plan to blog about at a later date), and were particularly concerned about Amy’s bridal gown.  We assured them that she'll either wear a recycled dress (previously worn by another bride) or wear a dress made from eco-friendly materials.

Alexandra thought the whole concept of green weddings and the GWG contest was great and wanted to take a video with us to include on her website – how cool?! (video below)  We are so grateful to have stumbled across this workshop, to have met Alexandra, and to have had such an inspiring and educational day.  Thank you, Alexandra, for opening our eyes to the world of home-made green cleaning products!!  We encourage everyone to read her new book, “Planet Home” to learn about ways to maintain a natural and nontoxic home (among other things) – friends nearby, we might even lend you our signed copy  ;)

Eco-friendly AND budget-friendly? Indeed...

Half way there!  As we draw closer and closer to our community give-back event, we’ve been thinking about ways in which to encourage folks to rethink some of their regular behaviors and give them a “green make-over.”  Some actions, like carrying reusable shopping bags to the grocery store, are very easy to implement and only require a small initial investment.  Others are perceived to be expensive, like buying eco-friendly household products.  On our latest grocery shopping trip, we wanted to test this theory and see how much more expensive some eco-friendly products are in comparison to their mainstream alternatives.  The results may surprise you – they surprised us!  Please watch our video, and the next time you go shopping, take a second look at the range of green products on the shelves in your local stores, as you may be overlooking some eco-friendly and budget-friendly options without even realizing it!

If you don’t have the patience to watch the 6 minute video, here are the results in tabular form…

Price Comparison: Trader Joe's vs. Mainstream grocery store

All the mainstream product prices were scaled to match the quantity that TJ’s sells their products in.  For example, the price of a 12-roll package of toilet paper was halved in order to compare to TJ’s 6-roll pack price.

If you watch the video, you’ll hear Amy explain that the laundry detergent price difference is correct.  Thinking about it some more, the only explanation we can offer for the stark contrast in pricing is that many detergents are made and sold as “2x concentrated” so that when you buy 50 oz, you’re getting 100 oz of washing power.  Some of the detergents included in Amy's calculation are 2x concentrated, but others are not (checking the website again, we see several 100 oz bottles of regular strength detergent for $15.29 – do they also fold themselves?).  Furthermore, speaking from our own experience using the concentrated detergents and now this particular eco-friendly detergent, the suggested amount per use seems to be pretty much the same volume, and our clothes are perfectly clean coming out of the wash using the eco-friendly detergent.  Is the “concentrated” label a marketing gimmick?  Who knows!  At the very least, the comparison shows that this eco-friendly detergent may also be very budget-friendly, and in the worst case, it’s comparably priced to the mainstream detergents that contain troublesome chemicals we want to keep out of our water bodies.

So... If price and effectiveness are equal, buy the eco-friendly option!

Please  :-)

Some helpful information for eco-friendly shopping:

- laundry detergents: consumersearch

- buying guides: National Geographic

- paper products (toilet paper, towels, tissues, etc.): NRDC

- difference between pre- and post-consumer content (quick hint, post is better): CNN

- why we should avoid using phosphates: Water Research Center

We could probably go on for hours...

Sympathy for Japan

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake and tsunami.

Nossas rezas e pensamentos estao com o povo do Japao na sequencia do terrivel terremoto e tsunami.  

Campaigning...

So we've been working on our campaign, but it’s not something that comes naturally to an engineer and lawyer!  We’re channeling our “inner politicians” in an effort to spread news of the competition and our plans for the give-back.  Amy had to travel to North Carolina on business for a few days, so she told our story and details about the GWG contest to the flight attendants on her way to Charlotte.  They thought it was so great that they announced it to the entire flight (~120 passengers) over the PA system!  Check out her photo with Melissa (US Airways flight attendant), who promised to vote for us and get some of her friends and family to vote as well  :-)  Thanks, Melissa!

Entao nos comecamos a trabalhar em nossa campanha, mas nao e algo que acontece naturalmente para uma engenheira e um advogado! Estamos focando o nosso “lado politico” com o intuito de espalhar a noticia da competicao e nossos planos para o programa de “retorno a comunidade” que devemos apresentar. A Amy teve que viajar para a Carolina Norte (em Ingles: North Carolina) a trabalho por alguns dias e ela contou a nossa historia e os detalhes do concurso (Green Wedding Giveway) para as comissarias de bordo na sua ida para Charlotte. Elas acharam a ideia fantastica e anunciaram para todo o voo (+ ou – 120 passageiros) pelos auto-falantes! Confiram a foto dela com a Melissa (Comissaria de Bordo), que prometeu votar na gente e falar com amigos e familia para votarem  tambem. :-)  Muito obrigado , Melissa!

Week 1 has come and gone!

What a week!  Last Friday (March 4) we visited Clay Hill Farm (CHF) for the first time to attend the sponsor social.  We got to meet Jennifer of CHF, one of the contest judges, the other finalists, and a number of the awesome sponsors.  You could really feel the positive energy in the room, and how excited everyone is to be associated with the Giveaway – it’s a real honor to be finalists.  On our way back home to New York, we couldn’t stop talking about all the ideas that were flowing through our minds after meeting such inspiring people.  All of us finalists have a unique shade of green, and we applaud the others for the actions they’ve taken to be green in their lives.

While we are still solidifying the exact details of the give-back event, it will surely include the Pace Law School community, where Douglas is enrolled in the environmental law LLM program.  We’d like to attract as many people from White Plains as possible, find out what things they are doing to be green, and help them find some ways in which they can reduce their impact further.  It seems like many people want to be greener in their lives, but they’re not sure where to start, or they’re intimidated by all the information out there.  We want to help them overcome this hurdle and get them on the green path.

We would like to send a huge “thank you” to all our friends, family, and the folks we haven’t met who have gone online to learn more about the GWG contest and to cast their votes.  The support and feedback we are receiving has been tremendously helpful during a long week.  While it’s exhausting, the energy of this contest has really reinvigorated our environmental spirits, and we are excited about the potential ripple effects this experience will have on the world around us.

Que semana! Na ultima sexta-feira (4 de Marco) nos visitamos a Fazenda Clay Hill (FCH) [em Ingles: Clay Hill Farm (CHF)] pela primeira fez para participar de um evento com os patrocinadores. Tivemos a oportunidade de conhecer a Jennifer da FCH, um dos jurados, os outros finalistas e inumeros  patrocinadores. Dava para sentir a energia positiva no evento e como todos estavam felizes em estar participando e ligados ao concurso – nos sentimos honrados por sermos finalistas. No nosso caminho de volta para casa em Nova Iorque, nos nao paramos de conversar sobre todas as ideias que estavam surgindo em nossas cabecas apos esse encontro com pessoas tao inspiradoras. Todos os finalistas tem uma sombra verde unica e nos os aplaudimos pelas acoes verdes que eles desenvolveram em suas vidas.

Enquanto nos estamos no processo de solidificacao dos detalhes do evento de retorno a comunidade, este certamente incluira um evento comunitario na Escola de Direito da Pace (em ingles: Pace School of Law), onde o Douglas esta cursando um Programa de Mestrado em Direito Ambiental. Nos gostariamos de atrair a maior quantidade de pessoas de White Plains que pudermos, e descobrir as coisas que eles estao fazendo para ser mais verdes e ajuda-los de alguma forma para que eles possam reduzir seus impactos futuramente. Parece que muitas pessoas querem ser mais verdes em suas vidas, mas s nao estao certos por onde comecar, ou se intimidam com a quantidade de informacao disponivel. Nos queremos ajuda-los a superar essa barreira e coloca-los na direcao verde.

Nos gostariamos de mandar um “obrigado” enorme a todos os nossos amigos, familia e todos aqueles que nao conhecemos , e que foram online para votar e saber mais sobre o concurso do  casamento verde . O apoio e retorno que estamos recebendo foi de tremenda importancia durante a nossa longa semana. Embora seja exaustivo, a energia desse concurso tem revigorado o nosso espirito ambientalista e estamos empolgados com os potencias efeitos dessa experiencia no mundo ao nosso redor.

Entering the Green Wedding Giveaway contest

It was through a stroke of luck that we found out about the GWG contest.  Two weeks before the deadline, I was browsing a cute, New England-based wedding website, www.loveandlobster.com, and came across their post on the contest.  Reading about it, I thought “this is us!” and after confirming we were eligible contestants, we got to work.  Being unfamiliar with video editing, we spent pretty much every second of our spare time over the next 12 days, creating the video and writing the essay.  I admit: I have a whole new respect for folks in the entertainment industry - who knew making a video was so much work?!  We hope you enjoy our story, and the green message we endeavor to spread to friends, family, and strangers alike.  You really can reduce your environmental impact, beginning with small steps, every day - give it a try!  Encourage others!

- Amy

Foi por um golpe de sorte que nos descobrimos o concurso do casamento verde (Green Wedding Giveaway contest). Duas semanas antes do prazo final de entrega do material, eu estava olhando um site de casamentos de New England chamado, www.loveandlobster.com, e descobri o anuncio da competicao. Lendo o anuncio eu pensei “isso e a gente!” e depois de confirmer que eramos elegiveis para a competicao, comecamos a trabalhar. Nao tendo muita familiaridade com edicao de videos, nos passamos cada segundo do nosso tempo livre nos 12 dias seguintes, criando o video e escrevendo a redacao. Eu admito: tenho um novo e complete respeito pelo pessoal que trabalha na industria de entretenimento – quem poderia saber que fazer um video daria tanto trabalho? Esperamos que voces curtam a nossa historia e a mensagem verde que nos tentamos passer para nossos amigos, familia e desconhecidos da mesma forma. Voce pode realmente reduzir seu impacto ambiental comecando com pequenos passos, todos os dias, podem tentar! E vamos incentivar os outros tambem!

- Amy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0LnLeVpURc

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!  We hope you enjoy following us on the journey to our green wedding, learning more about us, the Green Wedding Giveway contest that we are participating in, and the one sponsoring all this, Clay Hill Farm!  Check back often as we post more information, including tips on how you can become greener in your own lives.


Sejam bem vindos ao nosso blog! Esperamos que voces curtam e sigam  a gente nessa jornada ate o nosso casamento verde, conhecendo um pouco mais sobre a gente, o concurso do Casamento Verde que estamos participando e o principal patrocinador de tudo isso, a Fazenda Clay Hill (em ingles: Clay Hill Farm). Visitem nosso blog constantemente, ja que colocaremos mais informacoes, incluindo dicas de como voce pode se tornar mais verde em suas proprias vidas.