With Thanksgiving next week, we thought it was appropriate to share our Thanksgiving Time Saving Green Tips!
1. Ride sharing: Suggest your guests car pool to arrive at the Thanksgiving dinner. Purchase small favors and reward those who traveled together to save on gas.
2. Deep-fry the turkey: A turkey cooked in a traditional manner will spend several hours in the oven. Rather than burn up fuel keeping an electric or gas oven going that long, consider deep-frying the bird. It’ll take much less time. Plus, you may be able to donate the used cooking oil to be turned into biodiesel.
3. Go green with floral arrangements: Rather than purchase hot-house flowers, look around your own garden and yard for blooms and other embellishments you can use on the table. Loose twigs and berries also look very festive. Also consider pumpkins or other organic fruit for decorating. Later it can be turned into dessert!
4. Skip the bottled water: Purchase a faucet filter or a pitcher with filter so that you can use tap water instead of bottled water. Freshen up the water with a few slices of lime, lemon or cucumber.
5. Buy organic whenever possible: When stocking up on ingredients for your dinner, try to choose foods that were organically grown. Also, shop locally to save on gas and to help local farmers and businesses.
6. Cook less: Remember all of the leftovers you had last year? Rather than witness the leftovers go moldy in the refrigerator, simply cook less food to have less waste. With all of the food you’ll still have on hand guests certainly won’t go hungry.
7. Recycle household items into decorations: Many plastic and paper decorations are made overseas. Instead of purchasing turkey and harvest decorations, look around and see what you can use. Pine cones can be turned into turkeys with a few craft supplies and feathers. Indian corn is colorful and looks quite festive as a centerpiece.
8. Open the windows: It can become warm in a home filled with guests. Open the windows to cool things down before you turn on the air conditioning.
Original Post by Straus News www.strausnews.com
