While you may be enjoying the surprisingly warm weather this past week, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. In a typical year, millions of people travel across the country for Thanksgiving. Plenty of food is passed around the table as well, and food and travel are big additions to greenhouse gas emissions. So this Thanksgiving, here are 5 simple ways to reduce your carbon footprint while enjoying Thanksgiving.
5 ways to reduce your carbon footprint this Thanksgiving
1. Buy Local Produce
When it comes to deciding on what shows up on your Thanksgiving table, buying local produce is a fantastic option. Not only will you be helping the local economy and buying produce that is likely fresher, but you’ll also be celebrating in a more sustainable way. The main reason why buying local produce helps the environment is that it cuts down on the distance the fruits and vegetables have to travel before arriving on your dinner plate. Local produce will also likely have fewer pesticides. But what’s important about local produce is the food you buy, which brings us to our next point.
2. Eat less meat and dairy if you please
Here at CCAA, we’re not going to tell you not to eat turkey at Thanksgiving, but if you decide not to, we wouldn’t complain. However, apart from turkey, there are other ways to change up what you eat so that your carbon footprint is reduced. Dairy is a big opportunity to reduce your footprint at the dinner table. From mashed potatoes to casseroles to pies, a lot of Thanksgiving recipes call for milk and other dairy products. When it comes to substitutes for milk you can’t go wrong with oat milk, which uses less water and land than the other milk alternatives. If you’re baking, these dairy-free butter options may provide a simple way to avoid the carbon footprint of butter.
3. Order Online!
Black Friday is a huge part of Thanksgiving week and each year it seems to inch further and further into Thanksgiving Day. But this year, with the coronavirus pandemic still gripping the nation you’ll have a great opportunity to reduce your carbon footprint while also holiday shopping. Shopping from the comfort of your own home means that you aren’t hopping in your car and emitting carbon on your drive to the store. Delivery also pools together everyone in the area’s packages and is delivered in one van instead of having everyone getting in their cars and emitting more carbon. Now, ordering online isn’t completely carbon-free because it matters how you shop online. Buying in bulk, choosing slower delivery times so that everything is delivered at once, and minimizing returns are very important aspects of sustainable shopping. By buying all your items together and having them delivered at the same time you cut down on the number of deliveries and reduce the amount of packaging. Also, try to avoid returning your items because that negates the impact of buying online as often those goods are repackaged and sometimes won’t be sold again. So this Black Friday, get ahead on your holiday shopping in a sustainable way!
4. Crank that heat down: it’s sweater weather
While the weather seems to be warmer than usual this fall, you may have to turn on your heaters by the time we arrive at Thanksgiving. But to keep some money in your pocket and reduce your carbon emissions you’ll have to be mindful of the temperature you set your thermostat at. Obviously, the less energy you use the better it is for the environment, so here’s a handy guide on how to save energy and costs with your heater this winter. Having your heater set to 72 or lower and also opening curtains and blinds are simple ways to heat up your home without cranking up the heat. So throw on a sweater because it’s that time of year again!
5. Compost
When Thanksgiving is all over, you’re bound to have food scraps and leftovers. Instead of tossing those in the trash, you could create a compost pile. The environmental benefits of composting are vast. Composting food scraps removes trash from landfills and helps improve your soil quality for gardening. No matter where you live, composting is a simple way to use food bound for the trash in a more sustainable way. So when you’re in the kitchen this Thanksgiving put those food scraps to better use. The planet will thank you!
Growing up in Jamaica, Stuart Blackwood had a very different experience with climate change compared to those of us who grew up in the United States or Central New York. In Jamaica, Blackwood grew up with floods, drought, and hurricanes that made him realize from a young age that these climate events can have a big impact on an individual’s life.
“I do remember having public service announcements all the time,” Blackwood said. “They kept telling us to not waste water and to conserve electricity. I grew up in a country where every week there was a power outage somewhere.”
It’s those memories of having to be environmentally conscious at a young age that Blackwood still keeps today. It’s made him more aware of the things Americans take for granted like clean running water, which is supplied daily, and a consistent supply of energy.
Being aware of climate change his whole life, Blackwood decided to take on the CCAA Carbon Challenge earlier this year. In joining CCAA and working through the Carbon Challenge, Blackwood learned that his job as a physician is a cause for his high carbon footprint. So, Blackwood set off to find ways to reduce his footprint and use his relatively higher income in more eco-friendly ways.
The first thing Blackwood turned to was food as he and his wife committed to reducing the number of cattle and dairy products they would consume. Now, the two eat vegetarian for at least one meal a week and will try to slowly increase that frequency. To have a constant supply of vegetables Blackwood said he’s been farming more frequently.
“This year we have grown maybe twice as much produce in our backyard,” Blackwood said. “Everything from watermelons, to pumpkins, to sugar snap peas, lettuce, tomatoes, you name it.”
In that same garden, Blackwood installed a system of hoses that would conserve water and he also would look out for rainy days to avoid overwatering his plants. Those plants aren’t put to waste either as Blackwood has started composting as well. Along with the plants, Blackwood has begun composting paper, cardboard, and even old clothes. Blackwood created a Hügelkultur, leaning on the German practice of growing plants on a thin layer of soil over a raised bed of actively composting material. Once those materials are composted they go back into the soil to feed Blackwood’s garden, creating a cycle where items that would usually be thrown out are helping to grow the food that lands on the Blackwoods’ plates.
Another benefit of composting that Blackwood noticed is that it has changed his spending patterns. Previously, he may not have looked at how an item is packaged, but now he finds himself buying things in glass or paper packaging, instead of plastic. Blackwood likes to use the glass bottle for storage and adds the paper to his compost bin.
Inside his home, Blackwood looked to his lights fixtures as his next step in the Carbon Challenge. Blackwood bought a kilowatt measurement device that measures how many kilowatts of energy each device is burning. After using the device, Blackwood noticed that the actual energy usage of some of his lights varied from what they were supposed to be, and said that was causing his energy consumption to increase.
“Every single lightbulb in the house is now LED,” Blackwood said.
The advantage of LED lights is that they are recyclable and reduce your carbon footprint by a third compared to incandescent lights. Likewise, investing in solar energy is a great way to make your home more efficient, which is exactly what Blackwood did. For almost a year now, Blackwood has had a 12-kilowatt solar system on his home.
“We pretty much cover almost 95% of all our electrical bills with that system,” Blackwood said.
In taking on the Carbon Challenge, Blackwood found that the website had a wealth of information that gave him ways to invest his income in more eco-conscious ways. A side effect that Blackwood found was that these carbon-friendly changes didn’t only help the environment but were also economical, like his LED lights, and healthy, like switching to eating less meat.
Having lived his life in two different countries, Blackwood has grown to understand the global scale of climate change. Blackwood now prides himself on being a “student of the world” and learning about what is happening in other countries. Ultimately, it has led him to emphasize the importance of reducing your carbon footprint and coming together as a world to solve climate change.
“Climate change affects everybody,” Blackwood said. “It’s not just an American problem, it’s an everybody problem.”
Climate Change Awareness & Action (CCAA) was formed for the purpose of educating others and actively working towards reversing the anthropogenic climate disruption that threatens the earth.
It is imperative that we increase awareness and spur action on climate change:
to support fair and just public policies and legislation
to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
to support regenerative agriculture and conservation
CCAA seeks to create a community of people working together in CNY to bring about the changes we need to avoid an environmental crisis.
NEWSLETTER COMMITTEE
Editor: Gavin Landless Publisher: Gaurav Shetty Chair: Peter Wirth
UPCOMING EVENTS
CCAA holds its monthly meetings on the second Tuesday of every month. If you’d like to learn more feel free to email cc.awareness.action@gmail.com.
For an even more comprehensive list of events pertaining to sustainability and climate change, contact Diane Brandli with GreeningUSA to subscribe to the GreeningUSA listserve or to publicize an event you are organizing. dbdesigninteriors@verizon.net
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
If you are interested in working on the issue of climate change, please contact us at cc.awareness.action@gmail.com or call at 315-308-0846. Don’t worry about your skill level. We are all learning. We need people who can:
