How to have an Eco Wedding

1.
Befriend an alpaca farmer with land on the north side of Dartmoor that includes within it not only space for camping but also an ancient, double-tiered stone circle. Then find a pagan/wiccan priestess who can hold a handfasting in said stone circle.

2.
Envision a day in early spring where the sun is going to shine magnificently, even though the days on either side are filled with rain, then create and print your own invitations and mail them to all your friends, preferably including those with hippy and eco know-how, as well those who automatically bring along with them skills in guitar playing, drumming, and storytelling.

3.
Along with finding the standard pre-requisites such as hay bales, a marquee, a turkish tent decked out with comfy cushions, a maypole, and a teepee, recruit a friend to spit-roast an organic pig, then choose a best man with circus skills and bridesmaids who can weave flowers into crowns. Decorate the field with willow boughs in a big heart shape, along with ribbons and paper lanterns.
                                                                                    4.

Source reduced-plastic, compostable tableware such as Green Gate’s PLA lined cups*, wooden knives and forks, and paper plates made from waste sugar cane pulp. Within the celebration field, set up a loudly labelled recycling/waste disposal area to ensure that as little end waste as possible is produced.

5.
Encourage all local guests to bring a plate of food with them to share for lunch, and organise carob brownies, locally baked bread, local cheeses, and a butterbean stew for the evening meal. All organic, of course. Oh, and then pick some nettles from the field next door to add to the stew.

6.
Don’t stand on ceremony and don’t be shy for the handfasting itself. If it’s a little boggy from the rain leading up to your special day, just take off your shoes and get the mud between your toes. Be emotional, and share those emotions and your love with everyone around you. And, if it really is your special day, chances are that a hawk will circle in the blue skies above whilst you’re saying your vows.

7.
Ask your circus-skilled friend and his theatre partner to put on a skit after lunch, to keep the guests entertained, and then get him to do a fire show once it gets dark. Make sure you’ve prepared a big central fire for the evening too, and then scatter cross-cut fire logs and tea-lights in glass jars around the field to create a really spectacular atmosphere.

8.
Party into the night, camp out in the field next door, and be woken in the morning by the singing birds**. As guests part for their journeys onward and outward, hand out little packets of wild seeds and happy blessings for them to sow.

Thanks Rich and Dawn for including me in your special day, for being so loving, and for living true to your beliefs and ideals. You’re an example to us all.



* This is a biodegradable plastic made out of corn starch or other other plant sources and are thus compostable. I'm always a tad sceptical about so-called compostable plastics because - as with most things in life - there are certain strings attached, such as certain temperatures needing to be reached before composting is complete. I've never seen the process in action for myself, and the pictures of this material breaking down always show a collect of small particles left at the end, so I am always left wondering: what happens to those particles? Are they organic? Can organisms eat them? Or are they teeny little plastic particles that will be left in the environment. Natureworks LLC are the main company manufacturing PLA: perhaps they'd like to invite me to their premises to demonstrate for the effectiveness of their technology?

** Ok, I'll admit it, I didn't camp. It was freezing! Plus camping on my own didn't really appeal. But I went back for brunch the next morning and was reliably told that the birds did sing and that it was lovely.

The Parent Trap

How does a girl persuade her mum to stop trying to make her throw stuff away?

Since moving out of my shared house with Bron, I've been having a bit of purge. While this is a good thing (I hope) for the charity shops, and for me, it's been an equally bad thing for the state of landfill. The amazing Mrs. Green over on the My Zero Waste blog would surely have a heart attack if she saw the things I've been recklessly throwing "away" of late. For the most part I'm talking small things, out of date medicines I found in the back of the cupboard, an ancient video tape or two, stuff like that, and stuff that I can't even remember now that I sit here trying to remember.

The worst stuff, though, the worst stuff are those things that you need when you have a house of your own, but when you move into another household, as Bron and I have both just done, he to share with a bachelor friend and myself to the alma mater. This is the stuff that neither of you wants right now, but are left with the question: what to do with it in the meantime? Stuff like two plastic waste bins, one from the kitchen, one from the bathroom. Two old tires that came off my car that I'd saved because I had this cunning idea that they could be used as garden planters. A microwave that's going rusty on the inside; ditto with a toaster. A bag full of plastic bags that - even when you don't accept plastic bags from shops - somehow worm their way into your home.

Mix this with:
(a) a set of parents who have unconsciously embraced the modern lifestyle of 'out with the old and in with the new', and
(b) a girl who really doesn't want to deal with the reality of dismantling her home,
...and you get a big trip to the local dump.

I watched those two perfectly good dustbins ("a charity shop doesn't want stuff like like that" and, "I'll buy you a new one", instructed my mum) go sailing over the rails and into the skip - there to sit for all eternity alongside all the other household items the local Cornish folk had gotten bored of this week. It felt so horribly wrong. But (yes, here it is, that 'but') they needed to be out of the house that day, there was/is no space left in my storage rental, and no more space at the parental home for them either. Although it felt wrong, I also felt like I had no other option at that particular moment in time. A word to the wise: never try to clear house from 40 miles away; this is what happens. And where was Bron? Well he, of course, had moved out all the stuff he wanted and left me, in typical Bron-stylee, to deal with the rest of it.

But back to my opening question. Despite the episode with the bins, I managed to save the draining racks from the kitchen sink. Or so I thought...

"I just can't get this clean," my mum tells me while I'm drinking my morning cup of tea. She's trying to clean off the natural accumulation of gunk that any draining rack gets after several years of use (honestly, I have cleaned it since I bought it, just clearly not to my mother's standards).

"That's ok," I said, "You don't have to clean it."

"But its unhygienic. It'll grow bacteria if you put it away like this."

"It's fine, it'll be fine."

"Let's just get rid of it. I'll buy you a new one." Ah, bless her. She absolutely means well. And yes, a new one would be nice. But that's not the point: there's nothing wrong with the old one. It's perfectly usable. And there really isn't that much gunk.

The final word? In this instance, mine. "It hasn't given me food poisoning yet," I commented. To which she, reluctantly, conceded.

The irony in all this is the fact that both of my parents grew up in a time when 'make do and mend' was the daily mantra. My mum comes from a low income background where nothing was wasted. In many ways she's still very much a proponent of this attitude, but - as far as I can tell - only so far as hygiene is not involved. Bacteria be damned if my mum is in the room.