Give a gift to the environment by not harming it this holiday season

The holiday season is known to be the “most wonderful time of the year.” It is the time of year when everyone decorates their houses, has their family and friends over to enjoy big feasts with their traditional dishes, exchange gifts, and state how thankful they are for everything they have. However, what seems to be overseen almost every holiday season is how much the season can harm our environment due to the tremendous carbon-footprint it leaves behind.

Prayie Carbone, a current Kean University transfer student mentioned how he never had even heard of a carbon-footprint. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a carbon-footprint is “the total amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere each year by a person, family, building, organization, or company.”

Carbon-footprints are vital to the environment since an abundant amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gasses such as methane (CH4) can damage the Earth’s atmosphere and they are known to be one of the leading factors to climate change since they absorb heat.

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons.

The company, Inside Energy, held an interview with avid carbon-footprint researcher, Berners-Lee, and he explained that a traditional Thanksgiving Day feast itself does not leave a huge carbon footprint behind. Berners-Lee said this is because turkeys are a lot more efficient compared to red meats. Other common Thanksgiving side dishes such as corn, pumpkins, yams, potatoes, and cranberries also do not leave behind a big carbon footprint as they are seasonal, long-lasting produce items which do not require transportation by planes.

While the food we prepare during the holidays does not drastically increase our carbon footprint directly, the amount of waste we produce on Thanksgiving and throughout the holiday season, including on Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, and New Year’s, increases our carbon footprint significantly. On average, the United States wastes up to 730 football stadiums worth of food a year according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That being stated, it is important that during this holiday season we all become more aware of how much food we purchase and be sure that we consume our leftovers, so we can minimize the amount of food waste we produce. If anything, we could also compost our left-over food instead of throwing it out if it is not used in a timely fashion. Composting food is more efficient than just throwing food away because according to the EPA, composted food produces less methane, can be used as a natural fertilizer, helps land restoration, remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste, and can capture and destroy 99.6 percent of industrial volatile organic chemicals.

“Discarded food is the next frontier in recycling. America wastes too much USABLE and GOOD food,” said William Heyniger, earth and environmental science professor at KeanUniversity. “In just 5 days, Kean’s aerobic composting system safely transforms leftover food into a nutritious, safe, soil fertilizer, ‘compost’.”

“Designed to process 1,000 pounds a day of food and mixed with locally-sourced wood shavings (up to 300 pounds a day), what was once considered ‘waste products’ is now a resource,” continued Heyniger. “It is a natural, highly efficient process with the compost being used locally to restore malnourished soils. If used to grow more food, it closes the loop of reduce, reuse and recycle in the perfect way nature intended.”

Statistics from the Solid Waste Authority have also mentioned that during an average holiday season alone, the United States produced up to 7 million pounds of waste which included the materials used to wrap gifts such as wrapping paper, decorations, gifts that were thrown away, and so on. In order to decrease the amount of product waste we produce during this holiday season, we could think about saving old newspapers to use as wrapping paper or even just place a ribbon or bow on the gift itself.

It is also important to give a gift receipt with your gift should the recipient want to exchange it if he/she does not like it so they do not have to throw it away. We could also buy decorations that could be reusable for multiple seasons or use all-natural decorations that could be biodegradable (like pinecones off of trees) and use LED lights.

One last reason why the holiday season leaves such a big carbon-footprint is a result from all the traveling people do during this time of year. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions stated that an “average vehicle creates roughly 6 to 9 tons of CO2 each year” and that doesn’t include public transportation such as planes (which are noted to be the least fuel-efficient source of transportation), busses, or trains. So before heading over to a friend or relative’s house this holiday season, consider carpooling, taking an Uber-pool, or think about taking a train or bus since they tend to be a little eco-friendlier.