CALGARY — Kathy Eskritt and Adam Doherty are hoping to haul 250,000 empty bottles to the recycling centre, enough to pay for a Caribbean wedding next March.

"I've got a back seat full of wedding," Eskritt, 26, joked Thursday about the bags of cans already sitting in her car.

For Eskritt, seeking out and returning recyclables is an old habit. In university, she would pick them up and use the money for treats such as movies.

She pitched the idea of using them to pay for the wedding to Doherty, 27, after hearing about a couple in the U.S. doing the same thing.

The road to marriage has been hampered by a bad economy and the student loan debts they both carry.

Eskritt is a trained teacher but works at a day care; Doherty was laid off from his job after the company hit hard times and now works freelance as a web developer.

They can't afford a ring. And neither wants to start off by falling deeper into the red.

The plan is pay for their wedding in Jamaica and a modest, potluck reception back in Calgary with only money raised by returning bottles and cans. With quarter million of them at 10 cents a can, they should be able to raise $25,000.

Along with the satisfaction that will come from not breaking the bank to get hitched, the "recycled wedding" has deeper meaning for the environmentally friendly couple.

"To see litter and garbage and cans that should be recycled . . . It's important to take care of what we have," Doherty said.

"We're big environmentalists," Eskritt agreed. "We take and take . . . and we don't do anything back. We have to give back to the environment if we expect to keep taking."

Later, they hope to build an earth house — digging into the ground to build the structure that won't require external heat — growing their own garden and composting as much as possible.