TIRUCHY: Every big fat wedding leaves behind truckloads of trash in the form of discarded bottles, cups, food, etc. It all begins right from the invite. Not knowing what to do with the invitation card, many of us throw it in bins. To eliminate such wastage, a couple from Tiruchy has come up with an eco-friendly idea.
To lessen the carbon footprint at their wedding, Manoj Dharmar and Divya have decided to make their invite 'plantable' with seeds. It comes with an instruction that reads: This is a seed paper. To show your love for us, fold and bury it with dreams. Love will bloom someday.
While most of the invitations have names of gods or verses written on top of it, theirs begins with 'Nature', alongside pictures of the Uyyakondan canal and environmental crusader G Nammalvar.
"I have made it a practice not to take invitations as it goes to waste. One might say that you can send e-invites and save paper. However, I find it too impersonal. Therefore, to make the best of both worlds, we decided on these seed invitations," says Manoj.
As such invitations are not available in Tiruchy, Manoj has ordered them from Uttar Pradesh. "They are flower seeds and will benefit many insects and bees that sit on the flowers," he adds.
Besides 'green' invitation, the couple has also eliminated plastic bottles and cups from the wedding by ordering glasses and cups made out of sugarcane bagasse. All items that are to be served on plastic are removed from their menu.
They also plan to plant 1,000 saplings at a Miyawaki forest in Irungalur.
Manoj has been an environmental activist for six years. He is also a volunteer with Citizens of Uyyakondan, and runs Shine Treechy, an environmental NGO.