Lusting for Local Food

Why Going Local Is One of the Best Ways to Go Green

Sustainable weddings are a wonderful event to plan because every detail can be intentional – from the recycled paper or paper-less invites to the dress made of eco-friendly materials or, even better, found on consignment. Your wedding is the perfect opportunity to be authentic and share your environmental passion with guests. One commonly overlooked area to make a huge impact and drastically cut your carbon footprint on your big day is to serve local and seasonal food. And in Georgia, it’s easier, and tastier, than ever.  

Local food tastes better, doesn’t need a passport to arrive at your wedding and supports your local community and on your wedding day – good karma is great thing! In the U.S., food travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to fork and arrives on your plate with added chemicals to make the long journey, reduced nutritional value and lackluster flavor. Treat your guests to local goodies by using these great resources and tips:

•          In Georgia, there are several caterers that specifically source local and sustainable food. Check them out in Georgia Organics’ Local Food Guide. Already have a caterer lined up?  Ask them what they can source from local farmers!
•          Plan a seasonal menu. Working with your caterer is the easiest way to do this but you can have some fun with your fiancé and find out what’s in season for your big day. Eating seasonal food guarantees the freshest taste and is affordable.
•          Source local wine and beer. Georgia has some great local breweries and wineries coming online every day. Treat guests to something different form the usual Monday night football brew and check out options like Atlanta Brewing Company, Sweetwater, Terrapin, Persimmon Creek Wines and others. All listed in the Local Food Guide linked above.
•          Don’t forget the meat! Eating local isn’t just about veggies. Georgia has some of the BEST local meats. Enjoy grass-fed and humanely treated items on your menu such as beef from White Oak Pastures and pork from Riverview Farms.
•          Consider using local flowers. Most farms grow beautiful wildflowers to facilitate pollination of crops. Many sell these flowers at local markets or directly. While most brides choose roses or lilies, think outside-the-box and feature big, beautiful bouquets of local flowers instead. To find a list of farms who sell flowers, check out Georgia Organics online Organic Directory - look through the farms for listing that include flowers. Who knows what else you may find?!

Save food miles, serve tastier food, support the local economy AND do a great thing for the environment on your wedding day – support local food!

Hungry for More? Check Out These Tantalizing E-Bites

Online Local Food Guide 

Interactive Organic Directory 

Whole Foods Farm to Market Blog – The Faces of Those Who Grow Our Food

Step by Step Guide to Greening a Traditional Registry

 

Looking to give your registry a green hue?  Great decision!  Here are the steps we developed from our experiance greening our registry.

1.       Take stock of what you need. Books like The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day or stores like Williams Sonoma offer a great checklist of a typical registry.  We were able to go through the list and decide what we did and didn’t need.

2.       Evaluate your options.  We are dedicated to not only going for the green option but also to supporting small, local businesses. We investigated our local retail options and online resources.  We included traditional retail outlets in our survey and were pleasantly surprised to find many are now offering green product lines.

3.       Set and order your priorities:  Style, price, durability, usability, level of green, and sourcing were all important to us but we were not aligned on the order of priority.  Mandy set green above all others while Sean brought the more practical issues like durability and usability. For example, Mandy fell in love with a recycled glass artisan dish set for their everyday wear. It didn’t make the registry because it was not microwaveable.  We found another recycled glass set through Vivaterra that was.

4.       Test your products before committing to them:   Many of the green products are only available online.  It was important to us to ensure that the products lived up to their marketing.  For example, we bought samples of several styles of bath towels before committing to one. We wanted to see what held its color and we enjoyed the most. Similarly, we bought a couple samples of our everyday wear to test it out.

5.       Register at multiple places:  We were not able to find a way to aggregate our registry in one place. 

6.       Explain to your guests what you’re doing and why you are doing it:  The registry is a wonderful way for your guests to take part in your adventure.  You can expose them to fun, new resources that they will hopefully use beyond your wedding.  Consider taking time to explain to your guests why you chose the products and retailers. 

7.       Reduce and recycle the packaging material: 

a.       Reduce:  We eliminated wasteful shipping by arranging to have our local retailers hold our gifts so that we could pick up them up at one time. This also allowed us to cut out packaging materials. 

b.      Recycle:  We recycled the cardboard and other paper packing materials with our regular recycling.  We returned the packing peanuts to our local UPS store.

c.       Compost:  Tissue paper and wax coated paper are great additives to your compost pile. 

Wrapping paper’s bum rap

Q: Dear GGIS,

Christmas is almost upon us. Every year we have tons of wrapping paper and other gift wrap left over. What is the green solution?

Swimming in bows and ribbons,

Sean

 

A: Dear Sean,

Bags and bags of wrapping paper. My memory is of my dad playing basketball with the wrapping paper into the garbage bag. WOW. That’s a lot of recycling is my first thought.

1. Wrapping paper: Recycle it as though you would any other paper in your house. OR create a fun new tradition- make it a contest to see who is the best at unwrapping their gifts without tearing the paper. Then you can reuse it next year!
2. Tissue Paper: Tissue paper cannot be recycled but it’s great to add to your composting or reuse again.  Red will be great for Valentines in little over a month.
3. Bags and bows- Reuse, reuse, reuse. A little tape on the back and your bow is as good as new.

If you’re still shopping for gift wrapping- strive for wrapping that is more eco friendly.  Look for recycled content wrapping paper at places like Target or make your own out of paper grocery bags.

Have a blessed holiday!

Mandy

Tales from another Green Bride!

We are happy to feature a fellow green bride this week.  Enjoy Erin’s story! – Sean and Mandy

Erin Oxford & Charlie Clark
Isle of Palms, South Carolina

April 19, 2008

 

Our wedding was held on the breathtaking Isle of Palms. Isle of Palms is located just north of Charleston on the beautiful South Carolina coast.  My wedding and reception were held outdoors. I took this as an opportunity to show respect for the environment and encourage my guests to appreciate our surroundings as well. 

Isle of Palms is a nesting ground for loggerhead sea turtles.  Loggerheads and all species of sea turtles are in danger of extinction due to humans.  One common cause of death to sea turtles is that they eat plastic bags in the ocean because they mistake the bags for jellyfish.  The bags are deadly because it suffocates them.  

I wanted to bring awareness to the plight of these magnificent creatures on our wedding weekend and ensure we didn’t contribute to the problem.  My solution was to provide all of our guests with a reusable tote bag as their out-of-town guest gift bag. I knew from past experience that the paper out-of-town guest bags were ultimately thrown in the trash.

 

I purchased reusable cloth tote bags as our out-of-town gift bags.  I was fortunate to find some great totes in our wedding colors at Garden Ridge for only $1 each.  So instead of having guests throw away their paper bags, they acquired a bag that they could use after the wedding weekend.  I spotted a guest utilizing the tote as a beach bag during the wedding weekend and I encouraged everyone to try using them at the grocery store.

In addition to providing reusable tote bags, I required recycling by the vendors at both the rehearsal dinner and reception.  To my pleasant surprise, neither vendor added an extra charge. 

I have always been an environmental advocate. I believe it is partially due to being raised in the country and enjoying untouched parts of our earth.  I knew that utilizing a weekend where I was the center of attention offered me a stronger voice for environmental awareness.  I will continue to try to educate my friends and family on the needs of protecting our earth.

 

Soy Candles

 Q: Dear GoGreenInStyle:  I read that I should use soy candles when I entertain because they are a greener alternative. Why is that?  Are they greener than beeswax?

Thanks,
Sam

A: Dear Sam,

Soy candles are a good green alternative to your normal wax candles like those that are paraffin based.  Soy candles are plant based whereas paraffin is made of fossil fuels.   But you’re right, beeswax candles, especially locally made ones, are on par or greener than soy candles.  You may choose soy over beeswax because you have a wider variety and soy will often be less expensive.

Thanks,
Mandy

Bridal Shower – Yankee Edition

I was so honored when Mandy asked me to participate in the wedding. Besides the fact that Sean is like a second brother to me, I adore Mandy and really looked forward to spending more time with her and helping her prepare for her special day. 

As we started discussing plans, Mandy went into great detail about how she wanted an ‘eco-chic’ wedding. I’ll admit that my first reaction was like that of a deer in headlights. Eco-what? Green wedding? How on earth do you do that? Then Mandy explained how she planned to attain her goals and my second reaction was one of admiration. It takes a lot of effort and dedication to be green – to use local vendors, in-season meat and produce, and find eco-friendly items like bridesmaid dresses, flowers, and favors. 

I’m excited to be hosting the “Bridal Shower – Yankee edition”. I wanted to adhere, as much as I could, to Sean and Mandy’s vision. I had a bit of a learning curve, though. Besides recycling, eating some organic foods and using canvas shopping bags, I’m somewhat ignorant about being green. So I took to the internet and did some research. 

I deduced that Mandy has a fondness for historical locations, especially if it involves preservation of historical buildings and artifacts. So I searched high and low for a location that would suit. Not an easy undertaking. But eventually I found what I was looking for – an 18th century brick manor house in Maryland. They serve a traditional English tea and I thought that would be perfect for a bridal shower. 

My thoughts then went to invitations. I looked around for eco-friendly options – there are many out there – but didn’t see anything that I really liked. Then I thought about the most eco-friendly option – sending an evite. I was concerned because I didn’t want it to seem tacky or cheap, though I believe that evites are becoming a much more popular and acceptable form of correspondence. I questioned Sean about this and he agreed that evites were a good idea. So off they went… 

I then thought about favors. I didn’t want something that would look pretty on the table but be completely useless once taken home. If the favors were to be eco-friendly I thought it should be something that was usable (and possibly reusable), produce little waste and made with organic or recycled material. I typed ‘eco friendly favors’ into google and the first website that popped up was beau-coup.com. I fell in love with their tea sachets and thought it went well with the tea party theme. The sachets are made of silken fabric and processed in an organic certified production facility. Yes, I totally got that straight from the website. I did, however, make an eco-faux-pas because of my lack of ‘green’ knowledge. I found small organza bags for the tea sachets. I was going to go with no packaging at all, but I thought, “Hey, it’s a ‘green’ bag, plus it’s reusable. I’ll just skip the tissue paper”. When I got them in the mail I saw “100% Nylon” and had a mental moment. I went back to the website and this was the product description: 

“The corded silk handle makes it easy for your guests to carry. The bags are made of organza, a sheer silky fabric that gives the bag its see-through quality.” 

I saw “silk handle” and “silky fabric” and mistakenly thought that they were made with silk. Since many consider silk eco-friendly since it is a renewable material, I thought I was golden. WRONG. My bad, lesson learned. 

So I was able to include a few ‘green’ aspects in the shower, though not as many as I would have liked. For instance, I’m pretty sure the food and tea won’t be organic or completely local. But for my first foray into green party planning I’m pretty pleased with the shower so far. Hopefully the party will go off without a hitch and we’ll all have a good time!

Green Barbeque Blues

I have carried a lot of worry that finding a sustainable barbeque solution was going to be impossible. I can count on one hand the number of barbeque restaurants in the entire southeast that do sustainable barbeque. This hallowed southern establishment buys from the big CAFO’s in North Carolina and drive some of the worst water pollution in the world. 

Enter Brent of White Lightning Barbeque Company.   Late 20′s, early 30′s. The youngest son in the family business. Southern to a T. His mom has made chicken salad for Sonny Perdue, our current Governor and a true south Georgia boy. 

Brent’s eyes danced as we ran the different options.  We were all in agreement.  Nice but nothing fancy. We need to give all the Yankees the real southern experience but not make it hokey.

The menu was pretty easy. Pulled pork, chicken salad, Brunswick stew, potato salad, cole slaw, sweet tea (plus lots of unsweet tea so the Yankees can dilute the real stuff), pecan pie, and banana pudding.

Then we got to the sourcing discussion.  Everything was perfect. My heart raced. It was like being on a first date with a boy you really liked and preparing to reveal a fact that you knew was going to be make or break. 

Before I knew it, we were done with round one with flying colors. All were in agreement. We’d do a local pig that was not from a large farm.

 ”Is free range better than local?” he asked. 

I was stopped dead in my tracks. A million caveats ran through my head. “How do I answer that? How do I give him an answer he can hold onto and not an ‘it depends’?” Sean gave a slight laugh. In a stressed out, fast clip I spit out, “we’d prefer a free range option from within the state.” Inside my heart sank. That was not the tone I wanted to portray. Ugg. My inner critic sang “now he thinks you’re. You made him thing green is hard.”  All the while I was hearing my new hero Farmer Scott’s, “those free range chicken operations are a bunch of bologna.”

In an instant that all passed. I overreacted. I realized Brent really was excited about this like we are. He wants to learn about going green. He is genuinely interested for himself and he sees the potential it has for his business. He is pumped that this wedding will give him the opportunity to learn.

My heart burst with joy. I could barely contain myself. We found what we were looking for!

Sustainable Registry Guide

The registry is a tough yet critical component to greening your wedding. You are voting with your pocketbook and asking your guests to do the same.  By giving your guests green registry options you are involving them in your adventure.  Additionally, you and your guests will be exposed to fun, new resources that hopefully will be used beyond your wedding.  

Reminder to the bride:  People will always give you a gift even if you go the charity route or ask for no gifts. By creating a green registry you are empowering your gifts to fulfill your wishes.

Suggestion to the guest:  Stick to the registry. Chances are that the couple has gone to great lengths to put together their registry.  If you find something green not on the list or from one of their preferred retailers, reach out to the couple before you make the purchase. There’s nothing worse than a green gift that is not used!

Green Product Features to Consider

Not sure what to look for in green products?  Afraid you’ll fall victim to green washing?  Here are a few key product aspects to look out for.

•          Bamboo:  Bamboo is alternative to cotton because it fast growing plant that does not require intense amounts of water and chemicals like cotton.  It has come under criticism because increase bamboo demand is causing increased deforestation in parts of the world like China.  For more information about bamboo, click here.
•          Carbon Neutral:   Scientists believe that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic sources are the culprits behind global warming (aka climate change).  Individuals, businesses, and governments are taking action to reducing their greenhouse emissions and becoming “carbon neutral”.  Carbon neutral means that a business or individual has taken action to not emit additional greenhouse gases in their operation.  Neutrality is achieved through a variety of steps including reducing electricity use, sourcing locally, and purchasing carbon offsets.  For more about climate change or reducing greenhouse gas emissions, visit Conservation International.
•          End Run or Scrap Material:  Sometimes factories will have scrap material after production. (Think left over scraps of dough when cutting out cookies.) Like reclaimed material, artists will use the scraps to create a new product.  A fun example is Vivaterra’s Flip Flop Door Mat.
•          Fair Trade:  According to the International Fair Trade Association, “fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South.” Click here to learn more about fair trade.
•          Green Business:  Business like Eco Bella and Viva Terra are green through the product lines they offer and the way in which they operate their business. For instance, Eco Bella’s owners carefully research all vendors and products to ensure they are green before carrying them. They also live by example. Not only was the store a green renovation but the store has also been certified to be Carbon Neutral.
•          Local Business:  Small businesses are the backbone of a strong local economy. Collectively, they employ the largest number of people in our country. More importantly, local businesses keep the wealth in your community. For more about the value of supporting local economies, visit the EF Schumacher Society.
•          Low VOC or No VOC: VOC stand for Volatile Organic Compounds. VOC’s are the beloved new car scent and the annoying smell of wet paint.  Have you ever gotten a headache from a room that’s recently been painted?  It’s because VOC’s are not good for us (i.e. they are toxic). A growing number of people are developing an acute sensitivity to VOC’s due to repeat exposure.  This is known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.  People with this disorder suffer from symptoms including headaches, skin irritation, and muscle pain.  Green product lines are emerging to offer low or no VOC products.  They are quickly becoming the standard because they offer the same quality at the same cost without the harmful side effects.  For more information, click here.
•          Organic Cotton:  Eco Bella explains it best:
  • Certified organic cotton is free from toxic pesticides and insecticides or other toxic chemicals.
  • Certified organic cotton production is highly regulated and sweat-shop and child-labor free.
  • Certified organic cotton is free from formaldehyde, toxic dyes and silicone which harm the earth, its soil, and its water supply.

•          Reclaimed or Discarded Material: Similar to recycled materials, many artists bring a second life to items that they find and repurpose. Great examples are Vivaterra’s Vintage Ruler Chair made from old yard stick rulers or the Root of the Earth Bowl from discarded tree roots.
•          Recycled Materials: 
  • Metal: Aluminum and steel are durable and sustainable metals if we reuse and recycle them optimally. According to Earth911, “making new aluminum cans from used cans takes 95 percent less energy and 20 recycled cans can be made with the energy needed to produce one can using virgin ore.” (Source)
  • Glass: Unlike plastic, glass never wears out.  A ton of recycled glass saves 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar. (Source)

Disposal Drama

Q: Dear GoGreenInStyle,

Is using my garbage disposal good for the environment?

Signed,

Lynn

A: Dear Lynn,

A garbage disposal is the not the environment’s friend. Stuff we run through our garbage disposal or flush down the toilet goes straight to the waste water treatment facility. At the treatment facility, the water is separated from the waste.  The waste is separated off and incinerated to ensure that it is not harmful, toxic, and [insert any other word meaning dangerous to human health]. Incineration uses a lot of energy and it spews lots of yukky stuff into the air.  After incineration, the waste is sent to the landfill (to live forever).

Consider composting so you can avoid the landfill all together.  I also suggest reading the following article to learn more about this topic:

Garbage disposal guilt – disposal vs. the trash can for perishable wastes

Vegetarian Times,  Jan, 1996  by Jeanne Rattenbury

Mandy