Gobble Gobble-Tips For Making Thanksgiving A Little Greener
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to reflect on everything we’re thankful for, but it can also be a great time to establish some new green traditions into your holiday. Here are just a few ways we suggest for bringing a little green into your turkey day.
Shop local and organic
Did you know that the average Thanksgiving dinner travels 1500 miles to get to your table. Not only is this a carbon footprint issue, but think about this: Your turkey has been frozen possibly for months. The vegetables and fruits you’re eating have been developed for travel, not for taste. Why not pay your local farmer a visit? See what crops are available now and build your feast around them.
Make your Thanksgiving table eco-friendly
This Thanksgiving, ditch the petroleum-based plastic and synthetic decorations and adorn your table with natural and homemade festive decor. By using natural products (and reusing what you already have), you’ll decrease the demand for the production of new products and create less waste once the holiday is over.
Compost your kitchen scraps
Composting kitchen scraps can have a big impact. Twenty-four percent of the waste Americans send to landfills is organic waste—kitchen scraps. Keeping that waste out of landfills doesn’t just save space, it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, as decomposition in landfills creates methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Reduce your Thanksgiving travel carbon footprint
There’s no way around it: traveling miles and miles to share a single meal with family and friends is not the greenest of ways to spend a Thanksgiving. Yet that’s what the holiday is all about: good food, great friends, and close family. Closer to home means less carbon footprint
If you do buy disposable, make it sustainable
Perhaps you’re feeding dozens and need to purchase enough plates and utensils for everyone. Think about this: if every family in the U.S. bought one less package of paper plates a year, we could save almost half a million trees. So what to use if reusable won’t work for you? Choices for disposable plates, cups, napkins and utensils include those made from 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, sugarcane, and corn – and all are compostable, to boot.
Focus on meaning
Of all the American holidays, Thanksgiving is the one most filled with personal meaning. It is a day synonymous family. Before planning your holiday, take some time to remember the happiest moments from your childhood holidays. Chances are, your memories will involve people more than things.
Do you smile remembering helping your grandma mash the potatoes? The pre-meal football game you played with your cousins? Breaking the wish-bone? You don’t have to recreate these exact times of course (although doing so might be wonderful), instead, remember that no matter how your table is set, how the food looks or how the children’s outfits coordinate, the most important thing of all is simply being together.
