Turkey Day

With Halloween behind us, we can now begin to look forward to copious amounts of food consumption, extravagant parades, and the potential for out-of-town relatives.

This month, we’ll be featuring two separate posts covering all things Thanksgiving – starting with the carbon footprint.

Thanksgiving has a Carbon Footprint?

Thanks to researchers in 2016, yes!

To gauge the footprint, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University broke the holiday into two categories: food and travel.

As far as food goes, the researchers were sort of modest with their approach. Food production is among the largest industries in the United States and it is basically the focal point of Thanksgiving. Even though the majority of Americans plan to spend Thanksgiving with more than 10 people, the researchers chose to cover only a three-dish festive meal. The meal they chose was a roasted turkey stuffed with apples and sausage, green bean casserole, and a pumpkin pie.

Because each state is different in their standards, how they manage agriculture, and even their energy source, the researchers had to break the carbon footprint into a state-by-state analysis. They did, in fact, consider where the food was coming from, how it was produced, and the related environmental impacts. They also analyzed the energy source of the given state (coal versus nuclear, for instance), as well as the type of range used to cook the food (gas versus electric).

Because the information was broken down by state, the carbon footprint can differ somewhat dramatically. The state-by-state details can be found below.

Food, however, is not the only quantifier for a carbon footprint. The other factor taken into consideration was air travel.

Thanksgiving Travels

Air travel peaks every year right around Thanksgiving! Though it’s a pretty busy market regardless of the time of year. This year, we have an average of 100,000 planes departing from airports each day. In some respects, this is a cool feat. As a global society, we have innovated technology to the point of creating actual devices that can fly us through the air. But, these planes are causing damage to our environment.

2019 Flight Map per The Guardian

Basics of Airplanes and the Environment

Airplanes take so much energy just to make it off the ground. When absolutely empty of passengers, luggage, and even a full fuel tank, airplanes weigh about 90,000 pounds. In order to get the plane into the sky, we have to use a lot of fuel. In fact, departure and ascent are the leading sources of carbon dioxide emission in aviation – which is what makes non-stop flights a better environmentally-conscious option.

Since the researchers analyzing the carbon footprint of Thanksgiving were interested solely in America, it’s worthwhile to note that America is responsible for 1/3 of all air-traffic. Only 20% of the global population will set foot on an airplane in their lifetime, and of that 20%, Americans make up the majority. On average, airplanes in America are emitting about 16 metric tons per capita of carbon dioxide – one of the main greenhouse gases. One flight going from the West Coast to the East Coast will, at the very minimum, produce 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide! To help put that in perspective, every human every year produces an average of 5 metric tons. According to scientists, if your travels are less than 600 miles you’re better off taking a bus, train, or even driving yourself. Bonus points if you’re carpooling!

The biggest hurdle with making aviation green is simply the standstill in innovation. We don’t have a safe, suitable alternative to fuel airplanes. There’s also little room for improvement in regards to engines. According to some, we’ve already optimized engines with what they’re capable of achieving.

But Thanksgiving is still worth Celebration

Thanksgiving is a time to show thanks – whether that be for ourselves, our families and communities, or maybe even the world at large. While the holidays have transpired for some into a time of aggressive consumption, the underlining meaning is still worth acknowledgment. As a society, we just have some habits worth critically analyzing. None of this means that we should absolutely stop flying our relatives in for the weekend, or even halt on our 7-course meal. Rather, we should focus on learning about the impacts of our choices so that we may have a chance to change them for the future!

If you’re interested in calculating your personal carbon footprint, you can find a calculator here.