From Go Green Northfield:

It’s that time of year again, as we gather around our holiday tables to share a meal with friends and family, or attend neighborhood get-togethers with yummy spreads. What could be better? Well, actually….

Americans have a bit of a problem with food waste. This Thanksgiving, it’s estimated that we wasted nearly 312 million pounds of food,聽equivalent to over 10 pounds of food for a ten-person dinner. Yikes!

What’s the environmental impact of all that food waste? Let’s take a look:

  • 馃憥Roughly 103.6 billion聽gallons worth of water was wasted in the growing of that food,聽equal to about 156,980 Olympic-sized swimming pools. With our looming water crisis, that’s a concern.
  • 馃憥An estimated 710,000聽metric tons of CO2e聽emissions was released into the atmosphere in the production and聽transportation聽of this food.聽This聽is equivalent to driving your car 73,109 times around the Earth鈥檚 equator.
  • 馃憥Decaying food waste causes 58% of methane emissions from landfills. Methane has 80 times the warming power of CO2 over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere, setting the pace for our increasing temperatures.

So what can we do about it at home? We’ve got ideas thanks to Refed, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste!!

  • 馃憤Plan ahead. Calculate how much you will need to serve and purchase accordingly. You can use this聽food “Guest-imator” to approximate how much to serve based on number of guests and appetites.
  • 馃憤Develop a leftovers strategy. Check with your guests to see if they want leftovers and cook to that amount. Ask folks to bring reusable containers with them to take extras home.
  • 馃憤Get ready to freeze. Leftovers can be packaged and frozen. Now you’ve got dinner for months!