14 DAY TRIAL // There are only a few days left until Thanksgiving, and several green-oriented organizations are doing their best to try to convince people to switch to a vegetarian diet and stay clear of meat altogether.
However, there are also some greenheads who have taken a slightly lighter approach to the matter at hand, and who only wish that people started being more responsible when it comes to what ends up in their stomach and what ends up in the garbage bin.
According to recent estimates, about 35% of each turkey purchased for Thanksgiving is not eaten.
Seeing how this is a nationwide phenomenon, this basically means that Americans throw away (more or less without any second thoughts) about $282 million (€221.2 million) worth of this particular kind of meat on a yearly basis, Tree Hugger says.
As is the case with cattle, significant amounts of resources go into breeding, raising and eventually cooking these birds.
Therefore, it need not come as such a big surprise that those who are very fond of environmental protection and sustainability do not approve of this wasteful behavior.
Some argue that this comes a result of the fact that, during the holiday season, most US citizens tend to purchase a tad more food than they usually eat, and sooner or later, find that they have bitten off more than they can chew.
“Producing one pound of turkey meat releases 5 kg of CO2 emissions uses 520 gallons of water (if it’s similar to chicken production as estimated by the Water Footprint Network),” reads one study published by the Environmental Working Group.
Furthermore, “Using the USDA estimate of 35% consumer loss for turkey, that amounts to 204 million pounds of meat discarded. Multiplied by the above numbers, that equates to a total of about 1 million tons of CO2 and 105 billion gallons of water with it.”