Be Thankful, Not Wasteful

Thanksgiving is upon us (though, you wouldn’t know it with all of the Christmas decorations going up the day after Halloween ended). Admittedly, some of us here at Full Circle take this whole holiday delineation thing seriously and long for the good ol’ days when Christmas (or Kwanzaa or Hanukkah!) decorations all went up the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Halloween began the season of Thanks. Maybe we feel this way because we love Thanksgiving so much. Either way, we want to spend November thinking about Thanksgiving.

Let’s start with sustainability. We talk about sustainable celebrations a lot and you all know the deal there but since Thanksgiving is often a mega-meal, let’s talk about how to specifically make our consumption the most sustainable. According to the USDA, food waste is the largest contributor to landfills in the USA. This is problematic on many levels including that food waste in landfills releases epic amounts of methane, which contributes to climate change! So what can we do to eliminate food waste and be as close to zero waste as possible on Thanksgiving? Here’s what.

Eat your leftovers. Get your friends together over the weekend and have a “Friendsgiving” with your leftovers. They’ll thank you. Because there’s nothing like a cold turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce dipped in hot gravy. Seriously, nothing. We also know someone who uses a waffle iron to make stuffing waffles — we plan on trying that this year.

Freeze what you can’t eat. If you’re knee-deep in all the trimmings and there’s no way you can finish them all, portion them out and freeze them! Most things can freeze well and make really comforting meals on those upcoming winter days when it’s just cold enough that we don’t want to head out to the grocery store. Check out our varying Ziptuck sizes to see which work for which dish!

Make soup or stew with what you can’t freeze. That Turkey carcass is good for more than just the wishbone wish. Those bones are filled with flavor and with six cups of water on an all day simmer with some leftover herbs and veggies, you’ve got something delicious.

Compost what’s left. When you compost your organic waste instead of throwing it into the trash, you reroute it from the landfill (where it releases methane gas by the ton and increases greenhouse gasses) to the earth where it belongs and becomes food for trees which convert our carbon dioxide into oxygen and help keep the air breathable!

Help to eliminate food waste. Because we have a lot to be thankful for, and wasting food feels a bit antithetical to that.