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Written by Lindsay Crowder   
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Friday, 18 November 2011

Have an Eco-Friendly Thanksgiving!

The time of year is approaching again to gather with family and friends and share your thanks over a big meal. Yes, Thanksgiving Day is right around the corner! While this season is usually a time to celebrate the land and its offerings, it can also be a time to give our respect back to the environment. Below are some ideas to make this year’s planning and partying a little more eco-friendly:

Planning the Event
• Make sure you have the correct head count before you go shopping to make sure you will only buy what you will use.

• Once you decide on the menu, bring reusable bags to do your shopping.

• Buy only products in containers that can be recycled (if you compost!).

• Use cloth napkins and reusable/washable plates, cups, and utensils to reduce paper and plastic waste. If you need to buy new ones, go vintage! And if you must use disposable products, look for ones that can be recycled or composted.

aaronsgourmet.com
The Menu
• Buy organic. Organic products will reduce the amount of pesticides, fertilizers, and hormones in your meal and the environment. Start going to your local Farmers Market a couple of weeks ahead to see what you can expect to have on your menu! For more information on organic food and organic Thanksgiving recipes and ideas, check out:

slideshow.ivillage.com

organic.org

• Buy local. Supporting locally grown food will reduce your carbon footprint by minimizing excess manufacturing, transportation, and packaging in your meal. Moreover, much of the local food you find in the supermarket or at your local farmer’s market is organic. To help find local food vendors near you, look into these resources:

eatwellguide.org

Food Miles Food Miles

How to Become a Locavore How to Become a Locavore

• Buy a cruelty-free turkey. Look for a “Free Farmed” label, pasture raised, or heritage turkey. Retailers like Whole Foods and Williams and Sonoma will be selling free-range turkeys this year. You could also find one from a local free-range farm. If you are looking for a Heritage turkey, which is a traditional "standard" breed of turkey that has not been "industrialized" for efficient factory production, search for vendors at heritageturkeyfoundation.org.

• Go vegetarian! Because animals require more land, water, and waste to produce than vegetables and grains, going vegetarian is a sure way to reduce your Thanksgiving footprint. Everyone loves the side dishes anyway, stuffing, pumpkin and other tasty specialty breads, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and the list continues! Find some delicious vegetarian recipes at:

theveggietable.com

peta.org



midlifebatmitzvah.wordpress.com


Getting There
• If possible, stay at home! This will reduce emissions and excess energy consumption from your vehicle.

• Travel wisely. Walk, bike, or use public transportation if possible. If you must drive, make sure your tires are inflated properly and carpool if possible. If flying, consider buying carbon credits to offset your flight emissions.
The Feast
• Make your own decorations! Reuse last year’s decorations or get creative with things you already have at home. For a handful of ideas, click here.

• Turn down your thermostat. Having a house full of people while cooking all day provides a great deal of heat in your home. Adjust your thermostat a few degrees cooler to conserve energy.

• Turn off your lights! Use natural light as much as possible. Eat earlier or use candles instead of electricity.

• Eat your leftovers. Send extra food home with guests or get creative with your leftover food. Do not allow anything to go to waste.
Extras

If you still feel that your environmental itch is not satisfied by the above ideas, you can take your eco-friendly Thanksgiving to the next level by:

• Planting a tree on Thanksgiving Day. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is linked contributes to global warming, and returns oxygen to the environment. Give your thanks by giving back.

• Making time to say thank you for what our Earth has offered. Use this opportunity to talk about the environment and your eco-friendly meal.

• Go green on Black Friday! Instead of driving around town to catch every sale going on, make a conscience effort to stay eco-friendly the day after Thanksgiving. Stay at home, or go for a walk. Recycle your excess waste. Compost your leftovers or build a compost if you do not have one set-up, and you can look at some Greeniacs guides for help:

Make Your Own Compost Make Your Own Compost

How to Build a Composting Toilet How to Build a Composting Toilet
Think about adding green ideas into your red, orange, and yellow color scheme this Thanksgiving!

Browse all Greeniacs Articles Browse all Greeniacs Guides        Browse all Greeniacs Articles
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Comments (1)
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1. 28-11-2010 18:14
It is nice activity for the family. I will this if my children have their leisure time. I hope they will enjoy this eco- friendly activity.  
If you're hosting Thanksgiving, there are four words you may very well hear - "I am a vegetarian.". I read this here: Vegetarian Thanksgiving The host's guide to special diets Hosting any person with a specific diet is not necessarily difficult. Instead, it could be much easier than you may think at first. All a Vegan Thanksgiving recipe takes is certainly a careful substation of some ingredients.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 18 November 2011 )

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Green Facts

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.