have an earth-friendly feast
create a plant-powered menu
If you want a memorable food experience at your wedding, offer a full or half plant-based menu for your reception. Almost everything has a plant-based alternative these days, so your caterer may already have a few mouth-watering ideas. Your dream of a burger slider bar for dinner can be a delicious meat-free reality, and your perfect buttercream frosting can be made without dairy or eggs. Your guests likely won’t even notice the difference. Plant-based foods can also almost always accommodate for guests who may have medical, religious or ethical preferences and are unable to eat meat, eggs, seafood or dairy.
A plant-based menu will be lighter on the climate by generating far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than animal-based foods; it will reduce threats to biodiversity by using less land and water and causing less pollution.
reduce meat and dairy options
Instead of a vegan or vegetarian option being the outlier, make it the default and have your guests choose to add meat to the dish. That way you can reduce the amount of meat being served and make plant-based dishes the main event, next to your nuptials, of course.
Check out our Wedding Carbon Footprint Calculator so you can see the environmental impacts of your wedding options. To learn more about how you can create a more Earth-friendly menu at your event, read our Catering to the Climate report.
go local
Ask your caterer to look for ingredients that can be locally sourced to lessen the transportation impact. The same applies for beer, wine and liquor for a bar (if you’re having one). Buying locally sourced food can help support small businesses in your area, encouraging more sustainable growing practices and keeping smaller family farms in business.
opt for organic
Organically grown food doesn’t use synthetic chemicals for pesticides and fertilizers, so there’s less soil and water contamination. Organic farms also help support local pollinator and other wildlife populations since they avoid pesticides that kill indiscriminately.
Pesticides threaten the survival and recovery of hundreds of federally protected species, including polar bears, salmon, sea turtles, kit foxes, and many sensitive birds, amphibian and insect species.
save room for dessert
There’s always room for dessert, but not if it’s being wasted. Unfortunately, cake happens to be one of the most wasted foods at a wedding. Consider smaller dessert alternatives that your guests can enjoy, like mini vegan cupcakes, donuts holes or cookie bites. Smaller, plant-based portions can be more appealing and lead to less waste — especially for those who can’t indulge in a large piece of cake.
If having a traditional wedding cake is a must, get a smaller cake, order from a vegan bakery, and get one baked with organic and local ingredients. Changes like this will not only make your wedding unique but will help you do your part in helping save wildlife — and that’s the sweetest part.
It takes nearly 80 million acres of land to produce the food that gets wasted every year in the United States — an area 35 times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
BUCK THE buffet
Though buffet dinners present themselves as the easy and cost-effective option, plated dinners will give you more control over portion sizes and often result in less food waste. If you really want to minimize waste, you can even opt out of a full dinner and go with heavy appetizers or hire a food truck that will make fresh food as people order.
Ten percent of all wedding food is wasted. In an event of 100 people, that’s 10 full plates of paid-for food being thrown out. Wasting food also wastes natural resources wildlife rely on to survive.
donate leftovers
When food is wasted, so is the land, water, energy and other resources that went into producing it, creating unnecessary harm to wildlife and wild ecosystems. And with large-scale events like a wedding, wasted food can really add up. Ask your caterer or venue ahead of time if you can donate leftover food to a local food bank or shelter instead of throwing it out. Your good deed could be a welcome meal for someone who really needs it.
Food waste attracts bears and other wildlife, which often has lethal consequences. The more we throw out, the more wildlife come to rely on the buffet of edible food in trash cans, drawing them closer to the places where people are.
TAKE IT TO-GO
Another option to avoid food waste is supplying to-go boxes to guests. Look for cardboard carryout containers or ones made with recyclable materials. This growing trend is also a great opportunity to create a unique, reuseable wedding favor while giving your guests the green light to pack up delicious food and desserts for later. Wildlife-friendly touches like this can really make a statement and may inspire others to do the same.