By Ashley V.
As the holidays get closer, we wanted to give you several tips and tricks for becoming a little more sustainable this holiday season. Unfortunately, this holiday season will be unlike anything we have experienced in the past. As Covid cases continue to rise, it is encouraged to keep your gatherings small and short to reduce the risk of spreading illness.1 With these smaller gatherings, it presents an opportunity for us to practice our sustainable party hosting skills and get a feel for what works and what doesn’t before we move onto larger gatherings (hopefully by next year!). It is important to remember that no one is perfect, and even a small action can have a significant impact. According to Stanford University, American’s will throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday period than any other time of year. So when you plan your holiday gatherings, consider these sustainable actions…
Avoid Single-Use
I know it is easier to buy paper plates, paper napkins, plastic silverware, plastic cups, etc. and throw them away when everyone is done, but stop and think about what you are doing. Think of all the resources that went into making those items. All for your guests to use for about 30 minutes and then they get thrown away. Is that worth it? Help the planet and use your own dishes, silverware, cloth napkins, and glassware, and take the extra 30 minutes to do the dishes, all the while knowing that you are helping save the planet…it’s a pretty darn good feeling.
Borrow or Buy Secondhand
Instead of going out and buying brand new table clothes, serving dishes, drink dispensers, crock pots, and more, ask a friend if you can borrow it instead. If your friends don’t have one, go looking at the thrift shops before buying brand new. Not only does this save money, but it helps the planet from using valuable resources to make a brand new item. Also, if bought secondhand, you can help extend the life of an item and delay its trip to a landfill.
Reduce your Food Waste
I know Thanksgiving is the time to gorge and create massive amounts of food, but not at the expense of warming our planet. Did you know that we waste up to 40% of our food each year? On Thanksgiving day, that equates to 172 million pounds of turkey, 14 million pounds of dinner rolls, 74 million pounds of vegetables, 30 million pounds of gravy, 40 million pounds of mashed potatoes, 35 million pounds of cranberry sauce, 48 million pounds of sweet potatoes, 38 million pounds of stuffing and 3.5 million pounds of butter.2 That food will end up in a landfill and decompose in an environment without oxygen, which creates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. That amount of food will waste 225 gallons of water per person and emit 476 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 1.1 billion miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.2 We can do better than this. When you plan your holiday meals, consider how many people you are feeding and try to avoid massive amounts of access. Encourage guests to bring reusable containers to take leftovers home and meal plan after the holiday to make sure your family eats all the leftovers before they go bad. If you cannot eat them all fast enough, freeze them and eat them later.
Reduce your Meat Consumption
As a Wisconsin girl, I know that we love our meat and cheese. However, the global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes, trains, and ships combined.3 A significant step towards becoming more sustainable is to reduce your meat consumption. Now, we are not asking you to be a vegetarian. We are simply asking that we all eat a little less meat. So this holiday season, try to have only one or two dishes with meat. Bonus points if you can have at least one completely plant-based dish. We think you might be surprised at how tasty some of the plant-based dishes are.
Avoid Brand New Decorations
When decorating for the event, avoid buying brand new decorations, especially if they are made of plastic. Antique stores, thrift stores, garage sales always have a plethora of holiday decoration options, and you can give them a good home. Another great way to incorporate decorations sustainably is to use real decorations like pumpkins, gourds, wreaths, etc. Not only are they authentic, but they can later be used for cooking or composting.
Gift Wrapping
Did you know that 40% of the world’s industrial logging goes into making paper, and approximately half of our paper use goes to one-time use wrapping and decorating.4 Many of these gift wraps are not recyclable because they blend plastic and paper, which recyclers cannot separate. Thus, we are left with a dilemma of finding ways to wrap our gifts while not harming the planet. Personally, I use gift bags, and I am always the one after all the presents are open, folding the tissue paper for re-use and saving the ribbons, bows, and gift bags to use next year. Honestly, it’s an easy solution that’s sustainable and saves money. Win-Win!
We hope this helps bring a little more sustainability into your holiday planning this year. In the coming weeks, we will go into more detail on how we can make our online shopping more sustainable, and how we can give gifts to both our loved ones and the planet (the two are not mutually exclusive). Stay tuned!
Resources:
1- CDC
Sustainable Saplings 