Something old, something new, something borrowed, something ... aluminum?
Rare is the wedding gift registry in which crushed cans are listed alongside the typical Cuisinarts, comforters and cutlery sets. Rarer still is the betrothed couple who not only would prefer the used cans to the aforementioned gifts but would prefer them in ridiculously large quantities.
So when the folks at Alcoa's corporate center on the North Shore heard about just such a couple in Spokane, they felt they had to do something. After all, the company is one of the world's largest aluminum producers.
A bit of back story: In October, Spokane residents Peter Geyer, 29, a digital print technician, and Andrea Parrish, 25, a marketing and communications professional, got engaged at Parrish's sister's wedding.
"Peter caught the garter, and I immediately got down on one knee and proposed," Parrish recalled Thursday.
They began planning a relatively inexpensive, medieval-flavored wedding in July in a castle in Hope, Idaho. Rather than take out a $4,000 loan to pay for the nuptials, the environmentally conscious couple decided to try to pay for the event by recycling 400,000 aluminum cans.
"We wanted to pay for the wedding," Parrish said. "But we also realized that if we could do it, we could save about 50 tons of carbon emissions."
What⢠You mean you didn't consider carbon emission reduction when planning your wedding?
Geyer and Parrish couldn't recycle 400,000 cans by themselves, of course. No one can consume that much Diet Mountain Dew.
So last month, the couple launched a Web site, www.weddingcans.com, which provides details of their offbeat effort.
The cans began rolling in -- but nothing like they would when Alcoa got wind of the can plan this week.
"We started to see some traffic on the topic coming through Alcoa's recycling Web site (alcoa.com/alcoa_recycling)," said Greg Wittbecker, Alcoa's director of corporate recycling. "We thought it was a great idea and wanted to encourage the effort, so we decided to donate 150,000 cans."
When Alcoa e-mailed the offer, Parrish said, "Peter and I were blown away. I mean, our jaws just dropped. ... We were convinced it was a joke at first."
After verifying the offer's legitimacy, Geyer and Parrish gratefully accepted.
That doesn't mean 150,000 cans soon will arrive on the couple's doorstep. That's a bit much to ask the Postal Service, or even a UPS truck, to haul.
"Physically, delivering 150,000 cans, which would weigh about 4,500 pounds, would impose a logistical burden," Wittbecker explained. "So we're taking the commercial value of the cans, which is about $1,700, and giving them the cash equivalent."
Too bad. Would have made for a great photo opportunity.
Parrish and Geyer, though, hardly are disappointed. With six months to go before the wedding, they are just 136,000 cans short of their goal.
At this rate, by July there certainly shouldn't be concerns about having enough cans to tie to the back of the newlyweds' car.
