Just Married with Extra Aluminum Cans Behind the Car!

June is the beginning of the big wedding season! Pete and Andrea in Spokane, Washington, know the value of aluminum recycling. It’s not just about being green. It’s about making your dreams come true in a very green way…

To pay for their wedding they needed to recycle 400,000 aluminum cans. It’s not a big fancy wedding. It’s a celebration of family, friends, home-brewed beer and cake. They started on December 7th, 2009 and are getting married on July 31st this year. (Check out their web site at www.weddingcans.com) If you wanted to donate your cans and you lived in the Spokane area, they would even come pick them up for you. Others who wanted to give to their cause and lived farther away were encouraged to bring cans to a local recycling center and send the cash, or donate via the pay pal link on their website.

Being environmentally responsible is a big part of Pete and Andrea’s lives. They planned this crazy scheme to make their dream wedding come true and educate people about aluminum recycling. And boy did they do that! Aluminum recycling is one of the most sustainable and useful forms of recycling.

So, with their cash donations and donated cans, they've met their goals and are getting married! To date, they've collected 280,806 cans, with cash donations equivalent to 119,194 cans...and they are still getting donations.

Congrats and best wishes to you both!

- e.

Bake It Forward with Fair Trade Chocolate!

I’m sure many of you have heard about the child slave labor at the cocoa farms in West Africa. The corporate chocolate giants are not doing much about it as they continue to fill our insatiable need for chocolate and make billions of dollars doing it. I won’t give up chocolate, but I can start buying fair trade and ethical chocolate. What else can you do about it? Emily at Bake it Forward has a yummy educational idea that I am going to try tonight.

How to Bake it Forward

1. Buy some fair trade chocolate in a store near you, or purchase it directly from a company online. If you’re not sure where to shop, check out the links to the left.
2. Bake something to share with 5-10 friends, family, and co-workers. Click here for recipe ideas.
3. Download the 8-per-sheet bake it forward tags or the 4×6 photo-sized postcards to print out and attach to your baked goods.
4. Give them away!

Share the story of slave labor and BUY fair trade chocolate. Divine Chocolate is not only fair trade, the West African farmers own 45% of the business! In addition, Endangered Species Chocolate (left), a local Indianapolis chocolate company, makes ethical chocolate that is non-GMO verified. Plus, 10% of their proceeds go to save endangered species! Endangered Species Chocolate partners with the Rainforest Alliance, the African Wildlife Foundation, and the Ocean Conservancy, to name a few.

- e