Climes, The Company Working On Climate Change One Wedding At A Time

The Indian wedding industry is one of the largest in the world, following the US market. The total value of the Indian wedding industry is an estimated $50 billion.

Indian weddings for a long time have been known for their luxe and bling. They have unrestrained budgets where people often flex their social status and wealth. Weddings are also known for their sumptuous food, which is a major part of the expenditure. Any wedding is incomplete without the ‘licious food. An average Indian wedding generates about 200 to 300 kg of food waste, which amounts to almost 20% of the total food waste.

Overtime, weddings have become intimate occasions (intimate weddings) due to the pandemic-induced rules. E-invitations and online attendance is a growing phenomenon. Couples are now becoming increasingly eco-conscious by celebrating waste-free weddings. Many wedding planners are coming up with refreshing ideas to make this big day economical and less taxing on the environment. One such organisation leading the way is Climes, which works to make carbon-neutral events.

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The way towards sustainable weddings

Founded by Siddhanth Jayaram and Anirudh Gupta, Climes was started a year ago as they realised there are a lot of great climate-solution projects that exist, including forestry, renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, mangrove planting, which are trying to solve the climate crisis by avoiding or removing carbon. A large part of climate change exists because there is too much carbon in our atmosphere and oceans.

To attack the climate change issue, the duo became aware that they needed to enable more money to flow into carbon-solutions. They also came to know that the capital was not flowing fast enough. So, Climes was born out of the idea to generate money for such solutions.

Today, individuals across the world can see their carbon footprint on anything they consume and become conscious about their daily emissions, and thus contribute money to foster carbon-reduction programmes, which gives them the power and opportunity to tackle climate change head on. Out of sheer necessity, Jayaram and Gupta launched their organisation to beat climate change.

The organisation works with consumer brands to reach individuals who want to invest in climate-solutions. It is an intelligent step as these brands already have a large set of consumers which Climes can directly access. They offer tech-APIs to the brands at their point-of-sale checkout online. For instance, if one is adding a T-shirt from Tamarind Chutney into their cart, they can see the total life-cycle carbon footprint of the product (from production to transportation) as Climes has done a lot of analysis on different consumption patterns and types. Next, the customer can buy a bunch of carbon credits in the form of ‘climes’; each climes equates to 1 kg of carbon one can neutralise. So, if one sees 5 kg of carbon footprint, they can buy five ‘climes’. Each ‘clime’ costs ₹2. They are like stamps you can use on any climate change project of your choice, and enable financing towards it. Thus, some amount of your carbon footprint is offset by the money you helped flow into a given project within the country.

“Before flights or bus rides, weddings were the first place people wanted to neutralise carbon emissions,” said Gupta. “In India, we love big-fat weddings and they have an extremely heavy environmental footprint and at the same time people want to play their part in fighting climate change by making their weddings sustainable. So, we calculated the carbon footprint of the entire wedding, which was challenging. We had to take into account how many people were flying in, how many individuals were staying in, food and other factors,” he added.

Climes managed to find a partner called ‘The Wedding Brigade’, who offered to showcase ‘climes’ as a feature on their platform for all of their users. Through this, four couples neutralised the carbon in their weddings.

Soon, Climes moved onto carbon-neutral events after their initial success with weddings. They utilised the feature in many events such as conferences, birthday parties, festivals and so on. A lot of companies joined the initiative and bought ‘climes’ upfront and distributed it to their audience. People had the freedom to opt for the project of their liking, making climate action a collective choice.

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Choosing Climes to fight climate change

Arunima Ghosal and Subhadeep Chakraborty chose to get married by investing in Climes. Ghosal’s brother Arindham first got to know about this initiative through Sustainability Mafia, an advocacy group working towards climate change. “Post-COP26, I was learning about carbon offset and the voluntary carbon market in India. I came across Climes and the options they provide to calculate our carbon footprint and in one phone call with the co-founder, I found out about the various possibilities to offset any event. Since my sister’s wedding was knocking at the door, I decided to start with a carbon-neutral wedding,” said Arindham. “I chose to invest my climes in the waste-to-energy projects by Mahindra Waste To Energy Solutions,” he added.

Arindham also researched on how many developed countries have similar concepts and are creating climate change awareness through various events. “Wedding is an event where you can share ideas with your family members and friends, and leave a positive message of sustainable development.”

The couple’s wedding will also eliminate the use of single-use plastics, and there will be no plastic water bottles in the event. Instead of natural flower arrangements, they look forward to having responsible consumption. “I believe these small actions will help our guests to understand the steps we can take for a better climate,” he said.

Climes aims to make every wedding a carbon-neutral one. “We all love going to weddings, but they are so opulent and larger-than-life, and have negative environmental impact. We hope sustainability can become a default choice too. And this will happen if we bring in easy options.” said Gupta.

However, their motto as a company is “cut what you can and neutralise what you can’t”, so what Climes is offering is the last resort. Gupta wishes that people can actively measure their carbon footprints and reduce whatever they can, and their company aids the rest of the process.