The Thanksgiving Holiday is a time for food, family, and friends. It also generates a lot of trash that can have a negative impact on our environment.
Jaime Shepherd is the Community Outreach and Education Administrator at the Montgomery County Environmental Learning Center. She gives us tips on minimizing the environmental impact of the Thanksgiving holiday with the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
This transcription was lightly edited for clarity.
Jaime Shepherd: To really start reducing, especially that food waste, create realistic meal plans. Really think about what you are going to realistically consume during your holiday dinner.
How many guests are you going to have? Check your pantry before you go shopping; see if you have any ingredients for those meals already. A lot of us do like to have leftovers from the Thanksgiving meal. You want your turkey gravy, your turkey fricassee, your turkey omelet, your turkey sandwiches and soups. So plan those portions ahead of time.
"Thanksgiving is a great time to really show gratitude for what we have in the resources that our Earth provides. And being grateful for those things also means being a good steward and really looking at minimizing waste."
If you know you want leftovers, be realistic and make a plan for how you're going to use those leftovers as well. Be intentional about your consumption and then look at what you have leftover. Do you have food scraps left over either from the meal preparation or after the meal that can be composted? There are many of us now that compost at home, and so when you're looking at home composting, it's a great way to keep those food scraps out of the landfill. But we do have to be mindful about what we put in those home composting systems. Looking at your fruit and veggie kind of scraps and avoiding things like meat, bones, and dairies that would attract critters and just not break down well in those systems.
Looking at recycling, there are a lot of components of our Thanksgiving meal that come in recycled packaging, so we can look at what came in a can, making sure that we're recycling all of those aluminum cans. We’re recycling glass jars for our gravies, including that metal lid that can also be recycled. Make sure you know out of those food packaging, what can I recycle with my leftovers.
Mike Frazier: What is the best way to dispose of unwanted food? Put it in the trash or put it down the garbage disposer or is there some other way?
Shepherd: That's a great question. So with those fruit and veggie components, as long as there's not too much butter, dairy, oil - those leftovers could theoretically be composted. But if you have the ability and you're holding your food during that Thanksgiving meal at a safe temperature or making sure that any leftover components get refrigerated immediately, think about what your family might wanna take home. If you have guests coming in and they can take those leftovers home with them, that can help reduce that food waste as well.
You can also do things like gather your neighbors together for potlucks, have ways to distribute the leftovers that way, have to-go containers for your family to take things home with them. If you have neighbors that you know are maybe on their own for Thanksgiving, offering some of those leftovers to them is nice as well.
Frazier: What are some common mistakes that people make when it comes to Thanksgiving that may harm the environment more than people may realize?
Shepherd: So I think that recycling can be a tricky point for some folks. So when you are recycling your food packaging, make sure that you know what is currently accepted for recycling in your area. Recycling can vary a bit regionally. So if you're planning on having out of town guests, the things that are recycled in their area may not be the things you can recycle here. So learn to recycle right.
With your Thanksgiving meal, you're going to see things like aluminum cans, glass bottles and jars. Aluminum and glass are almost endlessly recyclable, so you want to make sure you capture those. Paperboard packaging is highly recyclable, so capturing that material. Plastics in our area, Montgomery County and the surrounding counties, we're looking at only things like plastic, bottles, jugs and tubs to focus on recycling.
Frazier: Do you have other advice about ways to keep Thanksgiving more environmentally friendly.
Shepherd: Absolutely. Using reusable dishes, napkins, cups, utensils rather than those disposable options are going to keep your holidays a little greener. The same goes with decorations. We don't necessarily need to go out and buy brand new decorations for every holiday that we have. If we're able to reuse what we already have, some of those items can become cherished family traditions. And if you are in need of new table settings, you can also check your secondhand stores. So buying used can be a good component as well.
Thanksgiving is a great time to really show gratitude for what we have in the resources that our Earth provides. And being grateful for those things also means being a good steward and really looking at minimizing waste.
So we want to be joyful this holiday. We want to have a great time with our family and friends and loved ones, but also being mindful of the impact that we have on the Earth and try to be considerate of those resources.
If you want to take recycling to the next level, Montgomery County will offer a master class on recycling beginning February. More information can be found by searching for master recycler on Montgomery County’s website.
