The greening of Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving nears, all the shopping, decorating and cooking is bound, as always, to generate lots of leftovers and tons of trash.

Almost half the food in the U.S. -- about 100 billion pounds a year -- goes to waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, Americans throw away 25 percent more garbage than at any other time of the year -- about 25 million tons.

In an effort to preserve all that they're thankful for, some Triangle families are celebrating a "green" Thanksgiving this year -- buying locally grown food, decorating with recycled materials and starting eco-friendly traditions.

Robyn Stout has recruited three of her Raleigh neighbors to put together a completely "green" Thanksgiving feast this year. They started preparing last month, going to the State Farmers Market to buy green beans to blanch and freeze for the traditional Thanksgiving casserole.

They're focusing on local, sustainably raised food sources -- from pasture-raised turkeys to organic flour for the homemade bread and sweet potatoes, pumpkins and pecans from the Farmers Market.

"Thanksgiving has lost a lot of its true tradition," said Stout, who works for NC Choices, an initiative that promotes sustainable local food systems. "But if we have to work a little harder to get the food, it might make it more meaningful."

Then, instead of just sitting around after the feast, Stout and her neighbors plan to start a new "green" tradition: planting an apple tree from a Reidsville orchard. "They won't have significant fruit (for) a couple of years, but it's still cool to have something to do now to look forward to on Thanksgivings to come," Stout said.

Connecting to the earth

Most of the Soehner family's Thanksgiving dinner was grown right on their farm in Chapel Hill -- from the salad greens, sweet potatoes, potatoes and beets to the spinach pie that will be the main course for Cindy Econopouly Soehner.

A vegetarian since she was 16, Soehner spent her high school years in Athens, Greece, where her father taught in the American Community Schools. Their family always enjoyed spinach pie for Thanksgiving dinner along with the traditional turkey and stuffing.

She and her husband, John, have owned Eco Farm since 1995. This year's feast is just an extension of their overall commitment to building a positive relationship between people and their environment, she said.

"It's not just Thanksgiving -- it's important because we need to do in life what's best for everyone," Cindy Soehner said. "If we're using chemicals and fertilizer and all that, it winds up hurting the earth."

Locally grown food requires less fuel to reach store shelves and often tastes better than food that has to be grown and packaged for maximum shelf life, said Nancy Creamer, director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, a 2,000-acre farm near Goldsboro founded to help support sustainable agriculture research and education.

"Most food now travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate," Creamer said. "As fossil fuels continue to rise -- and global warming goes right along with that -- it's very important for North Carolina to have a local food economy, because it's only going to get more expensive" to transport food.

While it may require a little more time and effort on the consumer's part, shopping at farmers markets or subscribing to CSAs (community-supported agriculture, which delivers weekly or monthly baskets of local farm products) helps the entire community, Creamer said.

It also can add some pizazz and creativity to meal planning.