Eco-weddings. Sustainable Weddings. Ethical Weddings.
The big buzz words around the wedding industry right now. How do you make your wedding more sustainable? Weddings can be pretty wasteful affairs, between the travel required to gather everyone in one place, the food waste, and the optional extras. With depleting resources, it’s good to minimise our impact on the planet, and I always look for ways, as a wedding photographer, I can reduce my footprint on the environment I love. There are really easy ways you can reduce the environmental and ethical impact too, and hopefully I can help! Here’s a few things that I’m doing…
Travel
Being a Cornwall wedding photographer living in rural area, I need to get to wedding venues, and whilst I love to cycle, it isn’t alway practical for carrying photographic equipment. For me it’s about minimising the effect of using a car with offsetting carbon emissions, using a modern fuel efficient vehicle, reducing journeys for meetings altogether through electronic communications. I’m also very keen to shoot for couples who host their celebration in one place, rather than a commission that might involve three separate venues. There are lots of Cornish wedding venues that will help you to host the most amazing event in one place, or hiring a Tipi (Wild Tipi’s green credentials are exemplary!) will enable you to leave no trace! Planning a glamping wedding, or festival wedding, means your accommodation and wedding venue are all on one site. So your guests can travel on foot to the celebrations.
Albums & printing
I like to use locally sourced photo albums, I use a company which produce the most eco-friendly books, right through to their papers, their processes and inks. I also use only recycled paper products for stationery, and only print where absolutely necessary.
Equipment
Probably the hardest area to find an environmentally friendly alternative is my camera equipment, but when I do need to replace my gear I always trade-in my old equipment, so that it can benefit others on their photographic journey, avoiding immediate landfill. I buy rechargeable batteries and dispose of them correctly. I also use power-efficient Apple computers with top environmental ratings for the processing of all my images. My home studio is powered in part by solar, which also helps to reduce my energy consumption.
So it’s easy to reduce the footprint of your wedding photographer, and here are some other great tips to help you have a sustainable wedding; use locally sourced British fizz, a wedding dress you can wear again, local seasonal blooms and digital wedding invites. Don't forget that the UK has some amazing places worth exploring for your honeymoon too! My personal favourite is St Ives, with turquoise blue seas and white sand it’s hard to believe it’s so close to home! Simple things make a big difference.