Helping to reduce, reuse Thanksgiving food waste

Friday, November 27, 2015

By Bill Dodd

Thanksgiving just might be my favorite holiday of the year, a time where families all across our nation gathered at the dinner table to give thanks and reflect on blessings that have been bestowed on them over the past year. We also ate a lot of food — nearly 50 million turkeys worth — making this time of year an excellent opportunity to focus on how we can better reduce and recycle our food waste.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that Americans will throw away more than 200 million pounds of edible turkey meat in the days after Thanksgiving. That’s enough food to feed every American household with 11 additional servings. More than 100 billion gallons of water will be used to produce that discarded turkey meat, enough water to supply the city of San Francisco for several years.