Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be about Turkey

Written on: November 3, 2017

Below is a very informative guide from Interfaith Power and Light that graphically connects our life styles and our diets with our carbon consumption. This is probably not news to you, but it is quite well done. The last page of the guide is a letter to your Members of Congress urging them to support The Homegrown Organic Act of 2017. You can make a copy and sign it and send it, or If you’d like, you can make several copies and collect as many signatures as you can, then send the letter with the signatures to the address shown at the bottom of the letter. I hope you find the guide enjoyable and thought provoking.

Happy Thanksgiving preparation,

Sister Diane Bardol

A Low Carbon Thanksgiving Guide (click link)

Highlights:

• Almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions comes from the food industry and our food choices.
• The average weight of a turkey purchased at Thanksgiving is 15 pounds. That equals 74 kilos of greenhouse gasses created in the production and transport. That is the same as driving your car 170 miles.
• According to Environmental Working Group, if everyone in the U.S. chose a vegetarian diet it would be the equivalent of taking 46 million cars off the road.
• American households throw out a THIRD of the food that they buy!
• “Dirty Dozen” The top 12 crops that are most heavily treated with pesticides: Strawberries, Peaches, Celery, Spinach, Pears, Tomatoes, Nectarines, Cherries, Sweet bell peppers, Apples, Grapes, Potatoes.

Reasons to eat organic foods:

• You reduce the amount of chemicals you eat
• Organic foods have more nutrients
• You will avoid hormones, antibiotics and drugs in animal products
• It helps preserve our ecosystems
• It reduces pollution and protects water and soil
• It just tastes better

Take Action and ask legislators to support organic farming. Organic food sales account for more than 5 percent of total U.S. food sales, less than 1 percent of U.S. farmland is dedicated to organic agriculture. The Homegrown Organic Act of 2017 (H.R. 3637) would help farmers who want to switch to organic. The US has a huge demand for organics however current federal polices do not give farmers the resources they need to switch to organic farming. Producing more organics will not only help protect our environment, it will make healthy, homegrown, nutritious foods more accessible for more Americans.

Click here to download the full report including a letter to send to Congress asking for support of The Homegrown Organic Act of 2017 (H.R. 3637)

AND, A VERY HAPPY AND BLESSED DAY OF THANKSGIVING!

Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

This entry was posted in With a Heart for Justice and tagged: antibiotics, carbon emissions, chemicals, ecosystems, food industry, greenhouse gases, Homegrown Organic Act, hormones, organic farming, organic food, pollution, thanksgiving, waste