Green Wedding Invitations: Urban Legend?
In a recent article that was picked up by Planet Green, Cara Smusiak cites the advantages of setting up an online RSVP for your wedding invitations. With little real evidence to support her claim, Ms. Smusiak argues that “Wedding invitations add up to a giant carbon footprint. Between invitation delivery and RSVP responses, there’s a lot of transportation and mechanical sorting involved—all of which requires energy, which is probably supplied by an unclean energy source.”
At the risk of being ostracized by the green community, I do think Ms. Smusiak’s claim is exaggerated and her advice may, in fact, cause more harm to the environment than sending out wedding invitations. For instance, the Gartner Group and HP report that the average web user uses 28 pages of paper daily. In fact, 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers: more than 3 times the volume of first class letters (non-sorted) in the United States. I guess the question is: Are we really any better off collectively if the emailed recipient is simply printing the invitation and direction card at his or her work station? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that it is probably a wash.
While I am all for helping the environment, I would like to do so responsibly. There are many talented invitation designers such as Oblation and Julie Holcomb who have been promoting green papers and eco-friendly printing solutions long before “eco-chic” and green weddings became fashionable. While we may feel better touting questionable green claims, the movement would be far better served by addressing more serious problems than pretending that wedding invitations are destroying the environment. ”Green wedding invitations“ sounds cool, but I suspect that it is just simply an ill-considered urban legend that continues to gather momentum without the benefit of much thought, let alone serious debate.
Environmentalists like Scot Case of Terrachoice, regularly point out the sins of “greenwash” and how exaggerated and deceptive claims undermine the environmental cause. Beating the drum for this particular “cause” is guilty of the sins of irrelevance and lack of proof.
April 18th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
[...] Green Wedding Invitations: Urban Legend? [...]
July 25th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Hi. As a quick response, the point of my article was not to eliminate wedding invitations; I would never make such a suggestion, since there are plenty of recycled paper options out there. I also think the invitations are a very important part of a wedding because they can help set the tone for guests, and it’s just so much more personal and lovely than say, getting an email.
My issue is with the large amount of paper used for RSVP cards and envelopes. If you consider you have one envelope for the overall invitation package, the invitation, an RSVP card, an RSVP envelope and a slip of paper with travel information on it, you can probably save 25 to 40 percent of paper by eliminating the RSVP card and accompanying envelope.
Using an online RSVP service where guests can let you know quickly if they are or aren’t attending could save a significant amount of paper, not to mention the costs and carbon-footprint associated with postage for those RSVPs. And you can still include travel information with the invitation, so there’s no need for guests to print anything out.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hi Cara. The point I am trying to make is that there are far more serious environmental issues than cutting back or eliminating “wedding papers.” By parroting these tired and totally unsubstantiated “greenwash” arguments we are simply pretending to be green. Ask yourself, what percentage of your daily mail is a personal note? If it is less than 10% (mine certainly is!) shouldn’t you really be concentrating on talking about the other 90%? Let’s address serious environemental issues rather talking about the tip of the iceburg.
January 31st, 2012 at 6:00 pm
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January 31st, 2012 at 10:17 pm
[...] Environmental Wedding Invitations: Urban Legend? [...]