The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday announced it would collaborate with several home appliance companies to launch a green wedding promotion campaign, in which couples can receive discounts on products with green labels as engagement gifts and may also win a cash prize for meeting the requirements of an eco-friendly wedding.
EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) said that more than 100,000 couples marry in Taiwan each year, and wedding banquets and related events are estimated to produce at least 420,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year. About 2.8 million trees would be needed to neutralize this amount of carbon dioxide.
In cooperation with local environmental protection bureaus and a dozen companies, the campaign offers engaged couples three types of discounts.
The first offer is a direct price discount on purchases of certain products with green labels, including the eco-label, energy-saving label, water-saving label, green building material label and carbon footprint label.
The second and third are a wedding gift discount coupon booklet for couples who submit green eco-wedding proposals to the local bureaus before the end of the year, and a NT$5,000 cash prize for the first 20 couples who submit their proposals.
The administration began promoting eco-friendly weddings in 2011, and has cooperated with local bureaus and various wedding-related stores, Shen said, adding that eco-friendly weddings will certainly help cut the nation’s carbon emissions.
A guidebook on eco-friendly weddings can be downloaded from the EPA’s Web site at http://greenliving.epa.gov.tw/GreenLife/Actions/2012wedding.
The guidebook contains advice such as serving food made from locally sourced ingredients at wedding banquets, sending wedding invitations printed on recycled paper or only sending e-mail invitations, and refraining from using disposable plastic cutlery and utensils.
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