Green Brides by Jim Parks on Creators.com

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Green Brides

The average wedding creates 400 pounds of garbage and spews 63 tons of carbon dioxide. Multiply that times 2.2 million weddings a year, and it's easy to see that the wedding business has a big environmental footprint.

Kate Harrison, an environmental educator and government environmentalist on state and national levels, noticed how few eco-friendly choices existed as she planned her own wedding. She spent hundreds of hours researching online, and thegreenbrideguide.com is the result of that research and her passion for the environment.

Harrison says she helps "brides connect with local green vendors" and makes "going green the easy, obvious choice." Wedding vendors are evaluated on a variety of aspects, including their mission, certification, eco-friendliness and practices.

Green weddings are a big deal since more than half of a wedding budget stays local, and this year's online wedding market is worth about $16 billion.

Questions can be sent to Jim Parks at jrparks@mac.com. To find out more about Jim Parks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.