Seven Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving Greener

To help make this holiday greener a growing number of people are looking at better more ecologically sensitive alternatives. Thanksgiving takes a tremdous toll on the environment. Here are seven ways that people are enjoying the Thanksgiving Holiday while lessening their impacts on the Earth:

1) Reduce Food Waste: To help minimize waste create a detailed, organized plan to reduce waste and eliminate excess. Make what you need and no more. The Love Food Hate Waste organization, offers convenient tips for reducing food waste, they even provide a handy "Perfect portions" planner to calculate meal sizes for parties as well as everyday meals. Use leftovers by storing them safely. Make sure to compost all vegetable waste. Donate excess to food banks and shelters. To find a food bank near you, visit Feeding America's Food Bank Locator.

2) Choose a turkey that is organic (it has fewer synthetic chemicals which is good for the animal, your body, the land and the water). Find a turkey that is locally raised (for fewer transit-related emissions). Offset your turkey by saving another's life at Farm Sanctuary. You can also consider trying alternatives to turkey like Tofurky or other meat alternative. For ideas about how to plan a vegan or vegetarian Thanksgiving go to Gentle Thanksgiving.

3) Buy local: Reduce the impacts of transportation by using products from local sources. Localy produced goods support the area economy and require fewer environmental resources due to diminished transporation.

4) Reduce Non-Food Waste: Purchase reusable rather than disposable items and when buying gifts avoid excess product packaging and recycle as much as possible. Take reusable shopping bags with you when you shop. Make shopping lists and stick with them.

5) Go Natural. Look to nature for festive décor and avoid commercial décor and party supplies. You can make a beautiful cornucopia of a centerpiece from fallen pinecones, autumn leaves, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. As for the rest of the table, use a natural sourced fabric tablecloth, not a plastic one.

8) Greener travel: Minimize your carbon footprint with green travel planning that sources the most eco-friendly transportation option available. You can also consider offsetting your flight: TerraPass and Carbonfund are good services by which to do so. You can also consider carpooling. You can find shared rides at Zimride or on Craigslist. Look into public transit too like the train or bus. The best option for those traveling short distances is to bike or walk. The Alliance to Save Energy's Drive Smarter Challenge offers extensive money and emissions saving tips for travelers as well as everyday drivers.

7) E-cards: Where possible try to replace paper cards with electronic cards such as: AmericianGreetings.com, Hallmark.com, or JacquieLawson.com

Be sure to check out Sierra Club Holiday Survival Guide. In addition to recipes, green gift-giving tips, there is an interesting section on how to communicate environmentally conscious living to your family and friends.

© 2012, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Articles
A Thanksgiving Infused with Environmental Gratitude
Thanksgiving: Living in Harmony with the Planet
The Environmental Toll of Thanksgiving
Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide November 2011
Patagonia Shows the Way with Responsible Business Leadership
Video: Retail Shopping from a Sustainability Standpoint
Video: Sustainable Shopping
Video: The Story of Stuff
New Methods of Manufacturing and New Patterns of Consumption
Thanksgiving Shopping: Consumption and the Earth's Carrying Capacity
Thanksgiving Shopping: From Black Friday to Green Tuesday
Thanksgiving for those who Feel Thankless
All Indications Suggest a Banner Year for Cyber Monday Shopping
Black Friday 2011 Saw a Big Year-Over-Year Spending Increase

Read More»

The Environmental Toll of Thanksgiving

The amount of waste and emissions generated during the holidays is staggering and shameful. Being conscious of the ways that we are wasteful can help us to seek more environmentally responsible solutions. Here is a brief summary of the waste and carbon emissions generated during the holdiay period.

Non-Food Waste

According to the EPA, the period from Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by more than 25 percent in the US. That amounts to an extra 5 million tons of household waste each year. Shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons create an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills.

The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high. This adversely impacts forests used to make paper, and the bleach used to make the paper white causes water pollution.

Food Waste

There is also three times as much food waste during the period from Thanksgiving to New Years as compared to other times of the year. The WorldWatch Institute says that total US food waste adds up to 34 million tons each year. According to Tristram Stuart, a food waste expert and contributing author to State of the World 2011, the food wasted in the United States each year is enough to satisfy the hunger of the approximately 1 billion malnourished people worldwide.

"Family, community, love and gratitude are all unlimited resources," says Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. "Unfortunately, food and the energy, water and other natural resources that go into producing food are not. The logical strategy is to let ourselves go in enjoying the unlimited conviviality and communion of the holidays, but to avoid wasting the limited resources. Even simple shifts toward sustainability----and reducing food waste is an easy one----can have major impacts when multiplied by millions of people."

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption----approximately 1.3 billion tons----is lost or wasted each year. Consumers in developed countries such as the United States are responsible for 222 million tons of this waste, or nearly the same quantity of food as is produced in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

The Sierra Club reports that there are over 7000 turkey farms in the US and 300 million birds are killed each year. Much of the billions of pounds of manure generated by these factory farms ends up in our water supply. Grain consumed by turkeys could go to the millions of people starving in the world. As stated by the UN, factory farming is responsible for more CO2 emissions than all forms of transport combined.

"With nearly a billion people going hungry in the world, including 17.2 million households within the United States, reducing the amount of food being wasted is incredibly important," says Danielle Nierenberg, director of Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project. "We need to start focusing on diverting food from going into our trashcans and landfills and instead getting it into the hands of those who need it most."

Travel

Thanksgiving is the busiest travel season of the year. During this periods millions of people will board flights or drive their cars to get to holiday festivities. A total of 43 million people are expected to travel this holiday and that translates to a significant spike in greenhouse gas emissions from air car and other forms of transporatation. According to the AAA more than 39 million people will be driving at least 50 miles each. The environmental impacts of those 39 million Americans are very significant. To illustrate the point a widespread dense fog developed across parts of nearly 10 states and southern Canada, disrupting and slowing travel plans on area roadways and airports.

The energy cost of Thanksgiving car travel are a major source of CO2. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, the passenger vehicles shuttling holiday travelers will travel 980 million miles, burn 40.8 million gallons of gasoline, require $132.6 million to $138.7 million for fuel, and emit more than 362,000 metric tons of CO2 (based on an EPA-estimated 8,887g of CO2 per gallon of gas), the emissions equivalent of more than 72,000 cars annually.

© 2012, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Next: Seven Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving Greener

Related Articles
A Thanksgiving Infused with Environmental Gratitude
Thanksgiving: Living in Harmony with the Planet
Seven Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving Greener
Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide November 2011
Patagonia Shows the Way with Responsible Business Leadership
Video: Retail Shopping from a Sustainability Standpoint
Video: Sustainable Shopping
Video: The Story of Stuff
New Methods of Manufacturing and New Patterns of Consumption
Thanksgiving Shopping: Consumption and the Earth's Carrying Capacity
Thanksgiving Shopping: From Black Friday to Green Tuesday
Thanksgiving for those who Feel Thankless
All Indications Suggest a Banner Year for Cyber Monday Shopping
Black Friday 2011 Saw a Big Year-Over-Year Spending Increase

Read More»

A Thanksgiving Infused with Environmental Gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States and people across the nation are celebrating by coming together to give thanks. Traditionally Thanksgiving is the holiday long weekend when people get together to celebrate the bounty of the fall harvest. The Thanksgiving tradition takes us back to the early days when European settlers were first making North America home. They were welcomed by Native peoples who showed them how to live in harmony with the Earth.

With our environment in crisis we need to cultivate the spirit of thankfulness that helps us to rekindle a harmonious relationship to nature. Gratitude of this kind may be difficult but it is essential if we are to find the motivation and the courage to advance ecological action.

As I have written in an article titled "Environmental Gratitude and Ecological Action:"

"We need a new way of communicating the urgency of environmental action because it is becoming increasingly apparent that standard fact based approaches are not getting through. Environmental gratitude is an approach that can help to inspire ecological action"

"The shortsighted pursuit of profit has led humans to ravage worldwide resources. Environmental gratitude may enable us to counteract this nihilistic tendency and expedite ecological action." 

This holiday season take a moment to remember and give thanks to the ineffable splendor of the world around us. Acknowledge the beauty and life giving properties of the natural world that we all depend on for our very survival. Remember that we have a responsibility to protect, preserve and restore nature's bounty for future generations.

It is also important to appreciate those who work to preserve nature. Ultimately those of us who are advocates of sustainability are advocates for the natural world. Our work is about more than creating low carbon commerce, our intent is to preserve our water, air, forests, animals, and fish.

While there are many corporate interests that continue their wanton rape of the Earth there are some who are bravely leading global efforts to find harmony and balance with the natural world. See this list of the most sustainable companies in the world, they also warrant our thanks and praise.

Gratitude is an attitude that can be more than just something we do one weekend a year; it can be a way of life that transforms the way we relate to the natural world.

We deeply appreciate your readership and we look forward to working together for a more sustainable world.

Wishing you all a happy holiday full of environmental gratitude,

Richard Matthews
The Green Market Oracle

Related Articles
Thanksgiving: Living in Harmony with the Planet
Seven Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving Greener
The Environmental Toll of Thanksgiving
Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide November 2011
Patagonia Shows the Way with Responsible Business Leadership
Video: Retail Shopping from a Sustainability Standpoint
Video: Sustainable Shopping
Video: The Story of Stuff
New Methods of Manufacturing and New Patterns of Consumption
Thanksgiving Shopping: Consumption and the Earth's Carrying Capacity
Thanksgiving Shopping: From Black Friday to Green Tuesday
Thanksgiving for those who Feel Thankless
All Indications Suggest a Banner Year for Cyber Monday Shopping
Black Friday 2011 Saw a Big Year-Over-Year Spending Increase

Read More»