According to the NRDC, the Thanksgiving holiday is one of the most wasteful times of the year, with 200 million pounds of turkey alone tossed out annually.

Three times more food waste occurs between Thanksgiving and New Years.

Cooking the same dishes for each year also leads to mass production of ingredients like turkey and cranberries, which puts undue stress on food systems.

Almost nine out of every ten American families eat turkey on Thanksgiving, and just four industrial agriculture corporations produce at least half of those turkeys.

The industrial process of raising these turkeys releases large amounts of CO2 emissions.  It also takes almost 1 million barrels of oil to produce and ship turkeys across the country.

Food waste is a bigger problem than many people realize.  Nearly one-third of all food produced in the world is discarded or wasted for various reasons. That equates to nearly 1.3 billion tons every year.  Wasting food contributes to environmental pollution as well as to natural resources degradation and depletion, threatening food security.  Discarded food is sent to landfills, where it rots and produces methane gas, which is the second most common greenhouse gas. In other words, throwing out your food contributes to climate change.

Avoiding Meat and Dairy has the Greatest Environmental Impact

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the a comprehensive analysis of the damage farming does to the planet.  The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, because cheese takes so much milk to produce, it’s associated with greater greenhouse gas emissions than animal products like pork, eggs, and chicken.

The research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

Cutting methane emissions is the fastest opportunity we have to immediately slow the rate of global warming, even as we decarbonize our energy systems.  Methane is the primary contributor to the formation of ground-level ozone, a hazardous air pollutant and greenhouse gas.  It is 80 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.  

Even if we pinpointed the worst offenders in oil and gas, its other sources would still require sweeping societal change, like a reduction in the number of cows raised for food. And revamping our subsidy system for the energy and food industries, which continue to reward fossil fuels.  Or setting new rules and incentives for sectors like farming, deforestation and waste management.  

Fish Farms

Freshwater fish farming, which provides two-thirds of fish in Asia and 96% in Europe,  was thought to be relatively environmentally friendly. But because of the excreta and unconsumed feed at the bottom of the pond, where there is barely any oxygen, it is the perfect environment for methane production, a potent greenhouse gas, said Poore, one of the researchers.