The first NT$100,000 cash gift for organizing a low-carbon wedding was given to a couple at their wedding banquet in Yunlin Coun-ty yesterday, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced.
The EPA began promoting its low-carbon-wedding campaign in September with a competition to award a NT$100,000 cash gift to three couples whose wedding banquets emitted the least carbon.
According to the director-general of the EPA’s Control and Evaluation Department, Yuan Shaw-ying (袁紹英), an average of 14.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced at each wedding banquet. With an average of 130,000 weddings held in the country each year, up to about 1.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide could be released, he said.
In the first round of the competition, the competing weddings’ carbon emissions were estimated on the choice of banquet venue and the amount of emissions released in decoration arrangements, the carbon footprint of the meals served, as well as making and delivering the wedding dress and the transportation used by the bridal couple and their guests.
Twenty-two finalist couples from each county in Taiwan were selected to submit a detailed plan for their low-carbon wedding to win a place among the three winning couples nationwide.
Chiang Ying-ying (江穎盈) and Liu Chi-ku (劉紀谷) were one of the final-three couples and were presented with a voucher by EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) at their wedding banquet held at a Japanese restaurant in Yunlin County yesterday.
The couple used e-mails to inform their guests of the banquet, organized buses to transport the guests, rented the wedding dress and accessories, and held the banquet at noon to save on electricity used for lighting.
The EPA said the couple chose local seasonal food for their banquet and used hand-made cookies by the Children Are Us Foundation — a foundation for ensuring the rights of people with intellectual disabilities— with simple flavoring and less packaging as the wedding cake for their guests.
The couple also used electric photo albums to display their wedding photos and promoted concepts to protect the environment at the venue, the administration said.
It also praised the couple’s decision of converting the usual small gifts for guests into an amount of NT$40 per person that they donated to charity.
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