Be Well

Are you ready for Thanksgiving yet? As you prepare, consider bringing some eco-friendliness to holiday meals with these great tips from Green Irene.

If you’re cooking for the holidays, go local with your food shopping to reduce your carbon footprint. See how much of your meal you can find at your local farmers’ markets. For supermarket purchases, try to choose items with minimal packaging to reduce waste. As always, bring reusable bags to reduce waste from disposable shopping bags. If you’re bringing your food to someone else’s house, pack your dish in a reusable container.

Go organic with your ingredients. Don’t forget to go organic with beverages as well; look for organic and local wines, beers, and non-alcoholic drinks. Fair-trade chocolate, tea, and coffee will also add some green to your holiday table.

Green Irene offers a terrific solution that easily produces sparkling water and soda in seconds, eliminating the need to carry, store and dispose of bottles and cans. The Green Irene Sodamaker uses a carbonator and glass carafe to make dozens of flavors of soda (or just sparkling water) as you need it. Rather than bottled flat water, invest in a great water filter and fill pitchers of water (rather than a cheap pitcher filter, invest in a more effective premium 10 stage filter like the one Green Irene recommends).

Serving turkey? Choose a heritage bird. Prized for their flavor, heritage turkeys may cost more than conventional birds, but they are raised naturally rather than in an industrial setting. Purchasing a pastured local bird or an organic bird from your supermarket are also other possibilities to consider when looking for the best holiday turkey for your family.

Recycle and compost while preparing food. Keep a bin handy for glass, plastic and paper trash you can recycle rather than toss. Add vegetable scraps from cooking and dinner to your compost. Green Irene offers a great automated indoor composter that operates without the hygiene or odor issues that can occur with indoor composting.

Adjust the thermostat down a couple of degrees during holiday gatherings in cooler climates. The heat from cooking and from your guests will keep your home warm.

Disposable plasticware is energy intensive to produce and can take thousands of years to degrade in a landfill. Providing cloth napkins and reusable tableware is the best option, but can make for a lot of cleanup work. When reuse isn’t an option, go green at your holiday parties by using biodegradable tableware. Green Irene offers a line of “bagasse” (sugarcane) tableware and cups that fully biodegrade within 60-90 days, unlike plastic or coated paper products which can take thousands of years to decompose. The sugarcane stalk fibers used in its production are also an easily renewed resource, unlike petroleum or wood used in most paper or plastic tableware.

If you’re traveling to enjoy dinner at someone else’s house, carpool with family, friends, or neighbors. If you need to fly for the holidays, consider purchasing carbon offsets to keep your travel carbon neutral. Green Irene sells a BeGreen Flying Offset card to make this easy.

Use all the food you make. Send guests home with leftovers in glass or stainless steel rather than wrapped in plastic or aluminum foil. Freeze leftovers in easily reheatable portions.

A few of these steps can go a long way in reducing your holiday dinner’s environmental footprint. Your localEco-Consultant is your source for the great products mentioned above, and they can provide you with even more ideas for waste reduction and greening your holiday table.

Do you have other tips for greening Thanksgiving? Share them with us in the comments below!