Environmentally Friendly Holidays

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time to be thankful for what we have.  This holiday, like most, has been much skewed from its original meaning.  Instead of being thankful for what we have, we instead over eat, over use, over indulge, and typically don’t do much to be thankful for the earth and all that it’s provided for us.  I want this year’s thanksgiving to be different for me and for many others out there.

I think there is many different ways to have an environmentally friendly thanksgiving.  My first suggestion I came up with when researching my last blog entry.  It is to plant a tree.  This is a great activity that gets the whole family involved and can become an environmentally healthy and fun sustainable tradition.  It would also be fun to remember past holidays by having different trees to visit in the future. 

One of the biggest ways I am going to change my thanksgiving this year is by trying to incorporate reducing, reusing and recycling into the holidays.  Instead of over eating, over using, and over buying I am going to try to work with what I have and buy and consume a much smaller amount than previous years.  I don’t believe this will be a challenge because for myself, and I’m sure many others, just being aware of my affects on the environment during the holidays is a change from previous years.  This awareness paired with trying to become more sustainable in a fun way, should make it a breeze. 

After recently watching, No Impact Man, he gave me the idea to buy locally grown food for the thanksgiving meal as well.  This way I know its fresh, local and one of the best ways to help have a more environmentally friendly Thanksgiving.  And lastly, I want this Thanksgiving to really have its original intent of being thankful for what I have.  This is going to be my biggest goal for thanksgiving to accomplish.  I want to encourage my family to talk about what they are thankful for and why.  I think this can be started by explaining why I want to do these different environmentally friendly holiday inclusions.  I hope my family isn’t too set in their ways with holiday traditions and will make room for new ones.