Something To Start
I'm about to dig into some quite shocking truths surrounding the world of weddings and sustainability. The purpose of this blog is to not only highlight statistical truths but increase awareness and education around this topic.
Having created an eco-conscious model for my workflow, it was firstly important for me to understand sustainability within the world of weddings, in order to accurately target and improve my eco-conscious model. I don't just photograph weddings for the sake of it, I do it because I adore weddings and photography, and I want to ensure that weddings can be beautiful but without damaging the environment and in an ethical way. So buckle in, because some of this might just shock you a little bit...
Carbon Footprint
Weddings make up a significant source of greenhouse gases. With recent research finding that the average wedding in the UK emits around 14.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide (C02), which for perspective is the equivalent of driving your car around the world twice... Yes, twice.
This is due to varying factors, including transportation of guests, catering, venue energy and waste disposal.
- Transportation: one of the biggest contributors is guest transport. Usually guests travel far distances to arrive at a wedding, either by car and sometimes plane.
- Catering: Traditional wedding food is heavily meat based, which has a higher carbon footprint then plant based foods.
- Waste: Food, packaging and decorations are just a few things that generate a lot of waste.
- Venue: Powering appliances and lights while also heating or cooling spaces takes up a lot of energy.
Here's the thing, I think we are all aware that we operate in the realms of luxury and consumerism, and with the collation of multiple suppliers whom all produce a mass of waste for one day, we should all bear the burden of responsibility in doing sustainability imperfectly, rather than perfectly.
Plastic Waste
According to Sky Ocean Rescue, the average UK wedding (with 100 guests), creates 20kg of plastic waste. In a year this equals 4,910 tonnes of plastic waste pouring into landfills are oceans, which is the equivalent weight of 47 blue Whales. Now that is a scary statistic.
Sky Ocean Rescue revealed that the biggest plastic offenders are:
- Plastic bottles
- Disposable decorations
- Gift bags
- Fake confetti
- Wrapping from table favours
- Bin bags
Bin bags deserve more of a mention, because the bags used for the post party clear up will remain in the ground until the coupes stone wedding anniversary, which is a staggering 90 years.
It's time that venues, vendors, and couples start looking at eco-conscious choices before consumerism. Luxury can still happen, it just doesn't have to be so wasteful. With an estimated 2.2 million weddings to happen in 2024, the amount of waste will only increase, and so thinking "can I purchase this second hand?", or "can I swap this for something more sustainable?", is an excellent starting point. Ultimately, at least half the carbon emissions of a wedding can be easily cut in half by making considerate choices, and imagine if every wedding cut their emissions by half, it would be the equivalent to taking 866,847 cars off the road for a year! What a massive change that would be!
