Highlights
Green Your Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to indulge in delicious meals and visit family and friends to tell them how thankful you are to have them in your life. Indulgence, travel, and shopping all impact our environment and health. Here are a few ideas to minimize that impact without giving up those things you are so thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving!
1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Paper or plastic? Neither! While shopping for the big meal, don’t forget to bring your reusable grocery bags to reduce the impacts of both manufacturing and waste.
Reduce your food waste. You may have heard that
40% of food grown in the U.S. is wasted. That means wasted water, fuel, land, calories, and labor.
The easiest way to reduce your food waste is to make the appropriate amount. Tradition tempts us to make a huge feast with plenty of leftovers. Do you really
need that twenty-pound turkey and three types of pies? How many leftovers did you end up throwing away last year? Focus on the foods that do not last as leftovers
very long – salads, fried foods, appetizers, and whipped cream. Food that lasts longer is more appropriate for leftovers – turkey, veggies, and soup. Get creative and
use leftovers as an excuse to try some new cuisine.
Here are some ideas or use an internet search for “leftover Thanksgiving recipes.”
Use fresh instead of canned and
packaged ingredients. Commercial canning of vegetables uses 3 billion kWh of energy per year — enough to run 8,571,428 refrigerators for an entire year. Using fresh and
bulk ingredients to make your Thanksgiving feast is healthier, better tasting, more rewarding; and reduces the preservatives, energy, and waste associated with machinery and packaging.
2. Choose Organic and Local
We are thankful for a lot of things at Thanksgiving. A healthy world, healthy life, and healthy economy can all be pursued by choosing to spend a little extra and make the extra effort to purchase local, seasonal, and organic food.
Organic matters. Organic produce is grown without pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, and organic turkeys are raised without antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic foods create a healthier earth – fewer pesticides and chemicals seeping
into the soil and running off into waterways supports healthier soil and more stable ecosystems. To find out what is in season where you live, try
this site or
this site.
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Newsletter contents prepared by Kelly Miller.
If you have articles, events or announcements that you would like included in this newsletter or if you have feedback, please email kelly@sierranevadaalliance.org.
