By Bethany Holtz - Outreach Manager
What’s more stuffed at the end of your Thanksgiving meal: your stomach or your trashcan?
Thanksgiving is a holiday all about overindulgence but that doesn’t mean you need to be wasteful. With some advanced planning you can avoid the prepackaged grocery items, disposable tableware, and plastic decorations. Try a few of our tips below to throw a festive and plastic-free holiday meal this year!
Food
There’s no denying that food is the centerpiece of Thanksgiving. I can picture Grandma right now slaving away for hours, getting everything from the turkey to the mashed potatoes just right. But with all that food comes a tremendous amount of packaging and waste. It’s easy to buy pre-cut and packaged goods, especially when you have so much food to prepare in such a small amount of time. Careful planning like buying local, prepping in advance, and planning your menu, can help cut back on the holiday plastic, while also helping you get ahead and stay less stressed.
Plan Your Menu: Planning your menu and ingredients ahead of time can help you be a savvy shopper while also saving money. Look at the recipes you plan to make. Does that side dish call for a quarter cup of squash? What are you going to do with the leftovers? Prepping ahead of time will allow you to see what recipes will generate leftover ingredients that you can utilize elsewhere. Instead of tossing that extra squash out, swap one of your side dishes and find something you can make out of that leftover squash instead.
Go Local/Seasonal: Most groceries in the United States travel an average of 1,500 miles before they reach your plate. Buying local and seasonal goods will cut down on all of this transport and travel, as well as the packaging involved. Visit your local farmers market or small grocery store to pick up some seasonal goods. Fresh produce has richer flavors—plus buying from your neighborhood farmer helps support your local economy.
Prep in Advance: Ditch the pre-diced, cubed, and chopped ingredients this Thanksgiving, as well as the frozen vegetables. Set aside some time the day before to do all of the dicing and chopping. We know this might be difficult as the holidays are often chaotic but try to make an event out of it. Maybe you can invite a friend over and prep together or make it a family event for those that come into town early. Have some of the family make homemade pizzas and the others can help chop and dice while the pizzas are cooking. If the day before is too busy, do it even earlier and freeze ingredients. You’ll be glad to wake up on Thanksgiving knowing that your ingredients are prepped.
Décor
Social media might have you believing that a well-set table is a must this holiday season. While these table settings are beautiful, they are often stressful to create and wasteful. It doesn’t have to be that way though. Go back to nature this Thanksgiving and set a table that is beautiful and sustainable.
Incorporate Nature: Grab your Halloween pumpkins, colored corn, gourds and hay because we are going to give them a second life. Thanksgiving is traditionally about the fall harvest. Embrace that theme this year and decorate using nature décor items. You can create beautiful place cards settings out of acorns or leaves or make a pumpkin flower arrangement as your centerpiece. Your guests will be amazed by your creativity and you will have spent less time worrying about fancy tableware that no one will remember the next day.
Kick Plastics & Disposables to the Curb: Thanksgiving is the one and only time my mother ever breaks out her fine china. We know that having a large crowd might mean you want to hide the good dishes but why not show them off. You can give the kids—and your clumsy cousin--your regular kitchenware if you’re worried. This might mean you will have extra dishes to wash but enlist helpers. In our family, the moms cooked and the teenage kids were in charge of cleanup. The men folded up tables and returned things to were they belonged. Everyone gets a job, resulting in the work getting done faster.
Cleanup
In every family, there are two styles of cooks: those that make a giant mess and those that clean up as they go. A meal as big as Thanksgiving is bound to result in a bit of a bigger mess than normal. But once you get beyond the dishes and counters, you are left with a pile of leftovers and scraps. It’s what you do with these extras, that can take your eco-conscious Thanksgiving to the next level.
Save Scraps: You are bound to have a few leftover ingredients from some of your recipes. Box these up and save them for other meals. Compost your peels and rinds. And don’t forget about your family pets—they would love a leftover carrot or two!
Freeze Leftovers: Leftovers are the Thanksgiving gift that keeps on giving. A turkey sandwich made from leftover Thanksgiving turkey is 100% better than a turkey sandwich made with store bought lunch meat. But be realistic with how quickly your leftovers will get eaten. Freeze what you won’t be able to eat before it goes bad. Take note of how much leftovers you have this year as well. Maybe next year you can cut certain recipes in half or skip the things no one seems to like.
Donate Your Pumpkins to Farm Animals: Before you toss that pumpkin in the trash, consider giving it a second life. Many farms accept pumpkins for their farm animals to enjoy when you are done with them. Just make sure the pumpkins aren’t rotting or moldy. If you don’t know of a farm that accepts pumpkins, post on your neighborhood Facebook group. Last year, we had a farmer come to our house and pick them up herself.