How a simple Indian wedding championed an eco-friendly cause

Flowers from organic market, no plastic, no new clothes and jewellery made it a zero-waste wedding

Veena Balakrishnan wanted a zero-waste wedding. When she said as much to her family, no one was surprised. Her parents knew where her heart was: the 23-year-old had, after all, quit a steady job to begin the eco-friendly start-up Two’s Company just a few months ago.

But weddings require massive work and immense planning, even without this added twist. A lot had to be kept in mind, from cutlery and decor, to the food served to guests. So Balakrishnan and her co-founder Sudarshana Pai got to work. “For any zero-waste event, you have to put thought into the planning and also on what needs to be done after the event is over. The idea, here, was that nothing left from the wedding should go into a landfill,” explains the bride.

Their first decision was regarding the venue. “My husband Vignesh was equally into this. We wanted to choose an aesthetic venue, so we could do minimal decor,” says Balakrishnan. They zeroed in on Rina’s Venue, a picturesque locale on the East Coast Road. Decorations were kept simple, traditional and floral. Flowers which were sourced from an organic farmers marketblended well with the aesthetics of the wedding venue.

“Step two, was to eliminate plastic cups, bottles and the like,” says Balakrishnan. We used banana leaves for plates, but no caterer could provide us the number of steel glasses we needed.” They had 700 guests, and were beginning to resign to the idea of having to buy as many glasses, when Balakrishnan’s mother had a brainwave. “She traced an ‘ex-catering company’ in Pollachi, and they agreed to lend us their glasses as they didn’t need them anymore.” So dedicated was her family to her cause, that the bride’s mother drove all the way to Pollachhi to pick up the dusty old glasses, promising to bring them back clean once the wedding was over.

The family’s dedication extended even up to the much-cherished planning of the bride and groom’s attire. Reducing consumption was priority, so both of them decided not to buy new clothes or jewellery. Balakrishnan’s bridalwear consisted of her grandmother’s wedding sari, and family jewels.

The guests were included in the cause as well. ‘Thankyou’ gifts consisted of seed bags and garden fertilisers; the latter made from ground vegetable waste from the kitchen and wrapped in appealing paper pouches. “In a way, we were also educating the guests,” says Balakrishnan.

The rest of the waste also made their way to eco-friendly disposals. Everything, including the flowers and banana leaves, was gathered and taken to Restore, an organic shop in the city that actively spread word of eco-friendly living. All the biodegradable waste went into Restore’s landfill. The non-biodegradables —“We did have some plastics; a miniscule amount compared to what most weddings generate. We couldn’t completely control what the guests were bringing in, after all,” says the bride —were taken to recyclers.

But the most noteable part of it all was the food. “We wanted to give all the leftover food to the Robin Hood Army, who would distribute it to the needy. But then Srinivasan, who runs the Coimbatore-based Radhe Catering, heard that the leftover was going to feed children. He was so excited that he and his staff made a fresh batch of food so the kids could be fed well,” says Balakrishnan.

The couple got married in June, and are basking in the success of their zero-waste wedding. A video of the whole event, shot by videographer Yash Suda, is doing rounds on the Internet. Needless to say, Balakrishnan and Pai are all geared up to add more zero-waste weddings to Two’s Company’s kitty.