Does a local wedding make a green wedding?
Feb 17th, 2008 by Katie
We’re often told that going green means keeping it local - which is all well and good but does pose a few problems for fair trade products coming from developing countries.
The dilemma is dividing us into two camps - those whose priority is the environment and local communities, and those for whom issues of social justice - human rights and working conditions - remain at the top of the list.
Our current Ethical Weddings poll asks whether, when having to choose between the two, fair trade or local produce would feature most on your wedding menu.
I’ve also just received the latest copy of Ethical Consumer and the editorial tells how at their London conference on ethical shopping last December, one of the main areas of disagreement was around just this issue:
‘the degree to which localism - or the localisation of supply chains - would dominate. Would pressure on carbon emissions see transport reduced to such a degree that our products didn’t travel so far?
Or would the fair and/or ethical trade movement grow to dominate a reformed international trading system which looks much like the one we have now?‘
The Times adds more confusion to the issue with its recent ‘Get off your food miles guilt trip’ article claiming that the ’local over long-haul’ choice is not even the greenest one. It points out that in most cases the greatest carbon emissions come from the production of a food product, not its transport.
So ‘tomatoes grown in the natural heat of Spain have less “global warming potential”… than out-of-season British tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses’ and New Zealand lamb produces fewer carbon emissions than British lamb as the British rearing process uses more electricity and fertiliser.
It concludes that the - extremely complex - “life cycle assessment” (LCA) of a product is the only way we can approach some kind of answer.
But where does that leave us, trying to plan a more ethical wedding - one that takes into consideration the environmental and social issues? Can we have our wedding cake (made with half fair trade, half locally-sourced ingredients) and eat it too?
Share your thoughts with us in the Ethical Weddings Forum.
Take care,
Katie
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Katie,
Really good to see the detail being challenged - please keep it up - it’s too easy for us all to just follow one simple credo/chant and believe we’re doing the right thing - sadly, life tends to be a little more complicated. Having the debate can only help couples make choices with their eyes wide open.
Personally I’d love to see a lot more ‘Life Cycle Assesment’ information available but even without this just a little thought can go a long way - a green venue may be not the right choice if it’s further for everyone to travel to, while a ‘green’ honeymoon that still involves lots of flying may not be as green as it says on the tin!
Andy
I agree Andy - but I don’t think Fairtrade and local produce necessarily needs to be a dilemma.
In an ideal world wouldn’t we get all the produce that can be grown in europe from a local source, and all the tropical produce (eg the coffee and the chocolate) from a Fairtrade source?
I volunteer for a local Fairtrade campaign, but I believe in local products too. I have made my wedding cakes from Fairtrade AND local ingredients (you just can’t get sugar from Berkshire… but of course you can get local eggs…!)
Interesting to se what others think though… maybe we should be avoiding tropical produce altogether to cut down on food miles? Should we just stop buying sugar, and use local honey instead to sweeten things?
Hi Katie - great post and good to get people thinking about what is an extremely complex issue. I think that one of the worst offending items is the flowers - most are not fair trade and, to add insult to injury, transported by air. It’s certainly worth sourcing British flowers with no air miles.
Jenny - great idea about the honey. If you do need to use sugar how about Silver Spoon which is extracted from sugar beet grown in this country? However, this raises other issues such as
1. It takes 4 times the land to grow beet, as opposed to cane sugar
2. It takes more energy to extract sugar from beet, but is this less than to ship cane sugar?
So many dilemnas so little time…