Green Thanksgiving: Reduce Your Thanksgiving Travel Carbon Footprint

For many families in America, Thanksgiving is a yearly tradition that often involves lots of food-and lots of travel. Overall, the holiday season itself often involves more traveling to various social and family gatherings as well as traveling to shopping malls and stand-alone stores. With growing concern over the well-being of our environment, many families are looking to make their Thanksgiving travel time a little more 'green.'

Location, Location, Location

When choosing a location for a Thanksgiving celebration, try to choose a family member (or friend) who is centrally located. It makes no sense to have the entire family drive to the other side of the state just to meet at one person's house. However, if the situation arises where this one particular person cannot travel, the consider carpooling rather than having everyone take their own separate cars.

Transportation

When traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday, an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to either carpool or use public transportation. Taking city buses, subways or even trains to your destination can help cut down on your carbon footprint. If you're traveling with a pet or someone who is unable (or unwilling) to use public transportation, then consider carpooling.

Also, before you take off on your trip, make sure all of your tires are properly inflated and that your car is in good functioning order. Proper inflation helps cut down on the amount of gas your car uses, which in turn, reduces your carbon footprint.

Turkey and the Thanksgiving Dinner

The turkey too, must travel to it's final destination: the dinner table. That being said, if you're in the position to purchase a local turkey, absolutely do so. In some states, turkeys are raised locally. Therefore, purchasing a local turkey not only boosts your local economy, but it also cuts down on your overall Thanksgiving day carbon footprint.

Aside from the turkey, the rest of your food also needs to make it to the dinner table. Again, like with the turkey, choosing locally grown or produced foods can help significantly cut down on your Thanksgiving day carbon footprint.

Carbon Offsets

Perhaps you just can't manage to swing any of these solutions for various reasons or another (hey, it happens.) So, when all else fails, consider purchasing carbon offsets. Reputable websites like CarbonFund.org sell carbon offsets, which, as stated in their name, help you offset the carbon you produce. When you purchase a carbon offset, the money is donated to a project that helps reduce emissions elsewhere such as investing in a renewable energy resource, finding new ways to reuse certain products or replanting trees in a forest.

Additional Information

Green Your: Thanksgiving