Be it catering, decoration or gifts, even the simplest of Indian weddings end up generating a heap of undecaying waste that will continue to deteriorate the environment for hundreds of years. However, amidst the poor state of environmental conditions caused by countless weddings, an Indian couple– Nupur Agarwal and Ashwin Malwade have been reinventing the idea of Indian weddings with their eco-friendly initiative.
“When we pick up waste from the beach, there is no way we are going to create that kind of waste. We want to have a sustainable lifestyle,” expressed Nupur Agarwal, co-founder of Greenmyna, an event planning startup that helps organise sustainable and eco-friendly events.
Nupur Agarwal from Kolkata and Ashwin Malwade from Maharashtra met on a beach during a cleanup drive in Mumbai. When they decided to get married, the couple approached a lot of wedding planners, but couldn’t find anyone who understood what they were looking for. Eventually, Nupur and Ashwin decided to organise their sustainable wedding themselves.
Speaking about the various sustainable techniques they adopted for their wedding, Nupur said that they served mocktails and fresh juices for drinks and decorated their venue with local flowers that were later sent into composting and generated no dry waste.
The couple got inspiring hashtags embroidered on their wedding outfits and the groom’s wedding procession (baarat) came in electric vehicles. The leftover food from the wedding was distributed, hence there was zero food wastage after the wedding.
The couple even requested their guests to travel by train instead of taking flights and planted one tree per guest. They also ditched the idea of using plastic in their wedding and came up with creative ideas like wrapping gifts in newspapers and serving sweets in steel cans with their wedding date engraved on them.
After planning their eco-friendly wedding, the couple decided to carry forward the idea of sustainable weddings and launched their own event planning company called Greenmyna. They provide consultations on how to organise a green and sustainable wedding.
Nupur and Ashwin now help plan other sustainable events like birthdays, parties, corporate events and more. According to Greenmyna.com, so far their impact summary records more than 200 trees planted, around 8,800 kg of waste composted, and 2,450 kg of carbon offset, a reduction of carbon emissions through eco-friendly activities like planting trees.
Shedding some light on their multi-pronged approach, Nupur listed three essential elements contributing to plastic generation through an event – decoration, catering and waste management.
Their waste management techniques include excess food distribution, dry-waste recycling and composting, and the calculation of carbon audit to measure the carbon footprint generated.
Ashwin Malwade, Merchant Navy officer and co-founder of Greenmyna added that they now help people plan events pan-India with local groups to empower local vendors to adapt eco-friendly practices. He said, “We want to make this a way of life for people going forward.”
