Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
Last year, Vermont played host to more than 4,500 weddings with couples spending $181 million to put on the events, according to industry research firm The Wedding Report.
But all that partying comes at a cost to the environment. According to “The Green Bride Guide,” a book about planning eco-friendly weddings, the average wedding produces 400 pounds of waste and 63 tons of carbon dioxide. The farther guests have to travel, and the number of guests on the list, also contribute to a wedding’s total carbon emissions.
As the wedding industry continues to grow in Vermont, many local vendors are embracing sustainability initiatives to offset this impact while offering couples an “eco-chic” experience.
“A wedding — a party that isn’t actually necessary — is never actually sustainable. But if you’re going to have a party, we try to do it in some ways that are a little bit better,” said Erik Caldarone, who co-owns Wild Sugar Homestead, a wedding venue in Newbury, with his wife.
For Caldarone, eco-friendliness begins with the actual land that hosts his wedding venue. He has focused on creating a landscape using permaculture, a design concept that reduces human impact on the environment by emulating the natural features of an ecosystem. At Wild Sugar, which sits on 70-plus acres, that means maintaining a growing collection of native trees, fruit bushes and other perennial plants, which can also be used to feed his guests.
Wild Sugar Homestead also partners with Wasted, a Burlington-based portable toilet company, to reduce the impact from what Caldarone says is one of a wedding’s most abundant waste products: urine.
“People pee a lot at weddings; they drink a lot, and they pee a lot. Instead of having that be waste, it’s harvested and turned into fertilizer, creating a circular waste system at your wedding,” he said. “The alternative would be to build a $50,000 septic system, flush it away, and ultimately put it into the groundwater or the Connecticut River.”
Wasted’s off-grid models don’t require running water and are much less expensive than standard portable toilet systems, Caldarone said. During last year’s wedding season, the venue collected between 200 and 300 gallons of urine.
The venue also offers a “pay it forward wedding closet,” where couples can borrow used supplies from previous weddings, allowing them to repurpose single-use materials, such as decorations, that would otherwise go to waste.
Florist Jessica Schievella is also trying to combat single-use materials in the wedding industry. Floral foam and plastic blocks used to hold flower arrangements are major waste products, she said.
But Schievella, who owns Flora Vita Floral Designs in St. Albans, says that sustainable floral arrangements are possible with the proper materials and a bit of creativity.
“Instead of floral foam, we might use a ceramic floral compote with chicken wire in it,” she said, describing raised bowls that can be used as table decor. “The chicken wire is reusable, so it just gives us a nice mechanism to arrange flowers into.”
After each wedding, Schievella collects the hard goods, such as vases, to be reused at another ceremony, while remaining flowers are composted or donated.
Schievella said educating suppliers and florists on sustainable practices is also an important part of driving change in the industry, especially in areas where eco-conscious alternatives don’t exist yet.
“One of our main floral foam suppliers just released a foam that is 100% biodegradable. It’s not made of those microplastics. A lot of the time, we’re waiting on the industry to release those types of products where we can have a similar function, but they’re more eco-friendly,” Schievella said.
While not every couple may opt for a sustainability-focused wedding, there are many smaller choices that can be made to limit the environmental impact of a wedding, said
Jaclyn Watson, luxury wedding planner and president of the Vermont Association of Wedding Professionals.
One option is switching to locally sourced menu items for catered meals, which Watson said is environmentally and economically sustainable.
“If you’re getting married at Boyden Farm, we would use the Boyden Farm beef. So not only are we being sustainable, we’re actually bringing money back into Vermont to the people who work here,” she said.
By supporting local sustainable initiatives, the movement to increase sustainability in the wedding industry could spread, Watson said.
“I don’t work just in Vermont. I work in Massachusetts, the Cape and Nantucket, and all over the world,” she said. “Because of what Vermont has taught me about sustainability, I take that to all of my clients everywhere, and they all love it.”
In the meantime, sustainable wedding vendors in Vermont continue to set an example for others seeking to make the industry more eco-friendly. For Caldarone, even small steps toward sustainability are a positive move toward decreasing the environmental impact of weddings in Vermont.
“If you could be spending that kind of money, why not do something positive? At the very minimum, try to be a little less wasteful,” he said.