To begin with, both Peter and Andrea have imaginative, artistic personalities. They believe in managing their personal impact the environment, in finding thrifty yet creative ways of living, and in donating to charities. They also led pretty frugal lives, given the combined income of two people with arts-based careers. In the home they’ve recently purchased for their marriage, they’ve created an organic front garden. They compost all their food waste and paper, and reuse other materials for as many projects as they can.
But just as they were planning their marriage, Andrea got laid off her job. Not only did they have less money to work with, they also realized that they would have to save an extra US$500 a month if they were to get married soon, even for a low-budget wedding. Acquiring credit—and thus, debt—just for the wedding was out of the question.
“The prospect of dropping even three to four thousand dollars on a wedding just hurt,” Andrea says.
The idea for using used aluminum cans to fund their came to Andrea’s mind one night, after helping Peter sort through a few used aluminum cans for his projects. One of Peter’s hobbies is smelting aluminum from used cans, in order to create artwork. Andrea already knew that a pound of collected used aluminum cans was worth some money when sold to local recycling centers or businesses that use them (e.g. the Instant Sign Factory in downtown Spokane). So she did the math and