Illustration from Native Energy

I knew we should have eloped! Here are some quick facts from eco-wedding rag Portovert:

• The average U.S. wedding has 165 guests; 54 will require lodging and/or air travel. (American Wedding Survey 2005)
• In the U.S., approximately 15,000 pounds of carbon equivalent are emitted per person every year. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
• The U.S. is the world’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for about 23 percent of energy-related carbon emissions worldwide.

Portovert has partnered with Native Energy to launch the first U.S. wedding carbon calculator, so eco-savvy brides and grooms can calculate the emissions generated by the major matrimonial-related carbon sources: guest travel, lodging, and venue power and heat.

Starting at $12 per ton of carbon offsets, the happy couple can invest in renewable energy by choosing one of three options: helping build new wind power projects, new family-farm methane-energy projects, or a combo of both. And if it’s not financially feasible to offset your entire nuptials—because, hey, who wants to start a marriage mired in debt?—making a manageable percentage of the wedding carbon neutral is still an excellent way to toast your new beginning in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

It almost makes me wish I had my wedding to plan all over again so I could do right by the planet this time around.

Well, almost.

Click here for more »

Poster by Natural Resources Canada

Another one of my (admittedly myriad) pet peeves: Idling cars, which spew just about as many pollutants as an ad-hoc convention of genitalia-impaired smokers does. I’d stick these flyers (provided by Natural Resources Canada) under people’s windshields if I could get reassurance that it wouldn’t just be a waste of paper. Or that I wouldn’t get shot. Right now, I’m the Queen of Dirty Looks.

NRCAN on why you should turn off your engine when parked, even if it’s only “for a little while.”

Conserve energy: You’ll help reduce needless greenhouse gas emissions.

Breathe easier: You’ll breathe more easily by combating problems like poor air quality and smog.

Save money: You’ll save over 80 litres of gasoline per year if you reduce your idling by only 10 minutes a day.

Idling for over 10 seconds uses more fuel than restarting your engine.

Besides poster and flyers, you can also print stickers for your car, bicycle, or commuter cup.

[via Treehugger]

Another update to my rundown of sustainable gardening tools, this time with SolarOasis’s energy-efficient LED-based grow lights. (As always, for your convenience, you’ll find the post under Sustainability 101 on the right-hand bar.)

Have a few disused cell phones lying around in the Drawer of Misfit Tech? RipMobile wants to recycle them for you, and it’s willing to dole out top dollar in the form of gift certificates you can redeem for carbon-offset credits from TerraPass.

The average car emits about 10,000 lbs of carbon dioxide (a leading greenhouse gas) per year. By purchasing credits from TerraPass, you’re reducing your car’s environmental impact by helping fund clean renewable-energy projects, such as solar or wind power, which will subtract an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide pollution from the global-warming equation.

Turning your car “carbon neutral” doesn’t give you license to pollute your SUV-loving heart out, of course, but helping move the economics and production of alternative energy is a huge positive step forward to rescuing us from our “national oil addiction.”

Have an old Motorola Razr V3 gathering dust? It’s worth $75, which is enough to trade in for a Utility TerraPass.

Why recycle cell phones at all? According to TerraPass,

• Recycling the precious metals such as gold in a cell phone reduces pressure to mine new materials. Mining is incredibly destructive.
• Cell phones contain toxic materials that don’t belong in landfills. Reselling a used cell phone is far more energy efficient than manufacturing a new one.
• Last but not least, purchasing a TerraPass with the proceeds from your recycled cell phone is a great way to promote renewable energy and fight climate change.

Check out how much your cell phone or PDA is worth here.

(The hub’s prehistoric Motorola is worth bupkas, but I’m still making him recycle it.)

GOOD MORNING, JEEEETTTTT LAAAAGGGG!

As I was flipping through the June/July 2006 issue of Plenty on the plane, I found a story on pg. 26, coincidentally about buying carbon offsets for air travel, which I thought provided a top-notch primer for people unfamiliar with the concept. Why bother to offset carbon dioxide emissions from your activities, for instance?

[L]et’s imagine, just for argument’s sake, that we agreed to limit emissions of the heat-trapping gas to the quantity that the world’s forests and oceans can absorb each year. Assuming equal distribution of “polluting rights” among all 6.5 billion people on earth, each of us would be allowed a maximum of 6,600 pounds of CO₂ emissions per year. That sounds like a lot until you do the math. You’ve probably got a refrigerator, right? That will cost you 220 pounds each year. Those 20 miles you commute each day? Subtract 4,400 pounds from your budget. Taking a flight from New York to Costa Rica to hug trees in the rainforest? Uh oh. That’ll be 4,000 pounds. Game over!

Not all human activities are created equal, and air travel is, according to Plenty, a “noteworthy culprit.” Says the eco-rag: “Some climatologists say that aircraft emissions such as nitrogen oxides exacerbate the heat-trapping qualities of CO₂ when they’re released a high altitudes—say, from a jet engine at a 30,000-foot cruising altitude.” Ok, so knowing this but unable to eschew all air travel, how do we keep ourselves from staying awake at night?

For those who wish to make amends for their jet-setting habits, a growing number of organizations sell peace of mind in the form of carbon offsets. With the help of online calculators, you can estimate the amount of CO₂ your air travel would generate, and then match this figure to the financial support needed to subtract an equivalent amount of CO₂ from the global equation. American Forests, for example, can remove an estimated 5 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year with every acre of trees it plants. Other companies sell offsets to provide funding for renewable-energy initiatives.

One couple, who offset the flights their entire wedding party took to their vow-exchanging affair, calls offsetting an “additional lever we can pull to move the economics and production of electric power in the right direction.”

Still, we shouldn’t use offsets to give us the carte blanche to jetset where and as we please. The point isn’t to excuse a “high-polluting lifestyle,” says Plenty. “We need people to cut their pollution,” Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program, tells the magazine. “If buying offsets makes people feel less guilty about their polluting ways, our children lose out.”

Air-travel distance extrapolated from this handy chart.

The hub (!) reminded me to look into offsetting our flight to Singapore by buying additional green tags. The Bonneville Environmental Foundation’s online calculator crunched out some numbers:

Our calculations indicate that your activities account for 51,816 lbs of greenhouse gases. Rounded up to the next whole number, it would require 38 Green Tag(s) to have these activities become 100 percent climate neutral.

If we choose to go with the Cooler Future green tags (99 percent wind, 1 percent solar) for $20 each, it would end up costing us $740 to make our air travel 100 percent climate neutral.

Announcing the percentage we’re going to pay would just be gauche, but we plan to give as much as we can afford to, especially in light of the fact our plane tickets came gratis because of accumulated frequent flyer miles (courtesy of all the business travel the hub has to do, even though it doesn’t exactly fill me with candy sprinkles and everlasting joy for all mankind, personally and environmentally speaking.) And I get to designate $1 per tag for Bonneville’s watershed programs. Plus, it’s tax-deductible. We like those.

Sometimes I wonder if including offsets in the price of plane tickets would deter the more callous from taking one too many frivolous vacations, or from jetting their multi-hyphenate family and celebrity doctors to Namibia to partake of their birthing miracle.

I’d probably have better luck wishing for a pony.