The holidays are a time of family, warmth, joy—and waste. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, 5 million extra tons of trash are created each week. It’s easy to reduce your contribution to all that waste—and greening your Thanksgiving is a great place to start. Here are eight ideas to get you on your way.

1. Buy organic, local produce.

Support the local economy and the environment by purchasing organic produce for your Thanksgiving feast from a local farmers’ market. Better yet, participate in the 100-mile Thanksgiving Challenge. Make a meal for your family and friends using only ingredients sourced within 100 miles of your home.

2. Eat natural turkey.

Although turkeys are native to North America, today’s turkeys have little in common with their ancestors. More than 99 percent of turkeys raised in the United States today are broad-breasted white turkeys. This version is renowned for its large, meaty breast, which has become so big that these turkeys can’t reproduce on their own and must rely on human intervention to keep their species alive.

Buy a natural turkey this year. Order your family a certified organic heritage turkey, which is raised outdoors, eats a varied diet and has a more succulent flavor than turkeys raised on factory farms. Find a heritage turkey near you using Local Harvest.

3. Make just enough food.

Although Thanksgiving is a holiday renowned for its leftovers, you should still take extra care not to prepare more food than your family can eat. To help you plan your Thanksgiving feast, Use Less Stuff came up with this list of the amount of food you should make for each person:

Turkey – 1 pound
Stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes – 1/4 pound
Cranberry salad – 3 tablespoons
Pie – 1/8 of a 9-inch pie

After the meal, look at the number of guests versus the amount of leftover food and evaluate how much food was consumed. Keep track of your calculations for next year!

4. Manage leftovers.

Divide up the leftovers between your guests and send them home in reusable containers. If you have more leftovers than your family can manage, donate them to a local food bank or homeless shelter.

5. Clean house with nontoxic, green cleaners.

If you’re hosting the Thanksgiving celebration (and therefore must clean your house beforehand), be sure to use green cleaning products. Natural homemade cleaners will also get the job done, and most use basic ingredients already in your cupboard.

6. Use reusable dishes and napkins.

A horde of guests and a kitchen full of dirty pots and pans can make it tempting to set your Thanksgiving table with disposable dishes. Don’t give in! If you don’t have enough  dishes or china for a crowd, pick up inexpensive used plates, which can be found in thrift stores for $1 or less. You can set a pretty—and interesting—table by selecting mismatched dishes with similar color themes.

If you must use disposable dishes, buy biodegradable and compostable dishes and utensils. Along the same lines, use cloth napkins instead of disposable ones.

7. Make your own centerpiece.

If there’s still room at your table after all the food and dishes have been set, create a homemade centerpiece. Avoid store-bought bouquets and gather items from nature. In most areas of the country, not much is in bloom, but cutting bare branches or branches with seasonal berries adds sculptural interest and connects your table to the season. You can put your hand-picked bouquet in this 60-second vase or this wood chip vase.

8. Drink organic wine.

If wine is part of your Thanksgiving feast, buy organic. Check out Natural Home’s guide to organic wine to get started.

Most Americans have a ladder, drill and hammer in their basement or garage that gets used only a few times a year. We could save resources—and money—by sharing these occasional-use items with our neighbors. 

Share stuff with your neighbors! Photo Courtesy NeighborGoods.

Recently launched in Los Angeles, NeighborGoods is an online community where you can save and earn money by sharing stuff with your neighbors. Borrowing and lending on the site is free, but neighbors can choose to charge others for their services. The site has a reservation calendar, automatic reminders (such as when to return borrowed stuff) and facilitates private messaging between members. NeighborGoods also tracks and shares each member’s transaction history so users can decide whether a neighbor is trustworthy or not. Members can rate each other or even flag another member’s account if something goes wrong. Most of the borrowing hubs are currently located in Southern California, but the site hopes to see borrowing hubs popping up in other areas of the country son. 

NeighborGoods has a foot in the past and an eye on the future. It takes us back to a time when it wasn’t so unusual to cross the street and ask a neighbor for a cup of sugar but also helps us focus on the environment and the future of the planet. By borrowing instead of buying new, we can cut back on consumption and the amount of natural resources used to create new products.

Have you used NeighborGoods or a similar sharing site? What did you think of it? Leave me a comment and let me know about your experience.

Here’s some good news: The Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it has reached a milestone in its Energy Star program by qualifying its 1 millionth Energy Star home. That adds up to a lot of savings—for homeowners and the environment. Since the Energy Star home program began in 1995, it has saved Americans $1.2 billion in energy bills and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 22 billion pounds. 

Photo Courtesy Energy Star/EPA

To earn the Energy Star label, a home must meet strict energy-efficiency guidelines, which can be fulfilled through high-performance windows, efficient heating and cooling systems, high efficiency lighting and appliances, and more. The home must also be tested and inspected by an independent home energy rater to determine if it meets Energy Star efficiency standards.

More than 6,500 builders across the nation have constructed Energy Star homes in cities such as San Francisco, California; Austin, Texas; Las Vegas; Boston; Orlando, Florida; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Wondering what makes Energy Star homes so great? Check out Paul and Rabia Nagin’s energy-efficient home in New York and Chris Parlette’s solar-powered home in Berkeley, California.

This week a new documentary that reveals the shocking effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining, a process that blasts off the tops of mountains to expose the coal within, is debuting on your TV screen and at house parties across the nation.

The beauty of the Appalachian Mountains is threatened by coal mining. Photo Courtesy Sierra Club.

Coal Country, produced by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller,reveals the hazards of mountaintop-removal mining pm the environment—including forest destruction and water pollution. The film follows Appalachia residents, miners and the activists protesting the practices of Appalachian coal companies.

In West Virginia, an increase in mountaintop removal mining has meant a decrease in jobs as people are replaced with machines.  Photo By Mark Schmerling/Courtesy Sierra Club.  

A 40-minute sneak preview of the documentary will be held November 9 through 15 at Coal Country house parties throughout the nation. Find a party near you on the Sierra Club’s website. Party attendees will watch the preview, discuss the film and have the opportunity to write a letter to the Obama administration calling for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. Actress Ashley Judd will join the parties via telephone.

West Virginia's Kayford Mountain has been almost entirely destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. Photo By Mark Schmerling/Courtesy Sierra Club. 

If you can’t attend a party, tune in to Planet Green on November 14 at 8 p.m. EST, November 15 at 12 p.m. EST, November 19 at 11 p.m. EST or November 20 at 3 p.m. EST.

For the first time ever, global investors put more money into alternative energy forms than fossil fuels last year. Global investors funneled $250 billion into creating new power capacity. Of that total, green power sources such as wind and solar received about $140 billion, 56 percent of all investments made.

At $51.8 billion, wind received the most investments–but investments in that energy source have grown by only 1 percent since 2007. Solar investments were the next highest at $33.5 billion. Although geothermal energy received only $2.2 billion, this energy source experienced the most dramatic growth with investments increasing 149 percent since 2007.

China spurred much of the growth, especially in wind power. Australia, Japan and Kenya increased their spending on geothermal energy, and Brazil, Chile, Peru and the Philippines are also set to introduce – or have already introduced – laws that will support clean energy.

Despite the investments, alternative energy still accounts for only 6.2 percent of total generating capacity and 41 percent of new total added capacity. Overall investment in green power sources grew very little over the last few years, and in the United States investments actually dropped 8 percent, probably as a result of the economic crisis. In fact, the biggest green power investors in 2008 were developing countries, which increased their alternative energy investments by 27 percent and now represent one third of global investments.

Although the recession may have deterred some from investing in green power, using alternative energy forms doesn’t have to mean personal financial sacrifice. With the new tax credits and rebates under the 2009 stimulus package, you could even save money by investing in green power.

It’s no surprise that Americans don’t want to pay extra on their energy bill—even if that “extra” helps fight climate change. A program offered by California-based Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), which helps customers offset their carbon emissions for a small fee, may be cut at the end of the year, thanks to nearly nonexistent interest in the program. 

Photo Courtesy  Thomas Hawk  

The program, called ClimateSmart, helps customers calculate the carbon emissions associated with their gas and electricity use and make a tax-deductible donation that allows PG&E to buy carbon offsets. PG&E buys its carbon offsets from a variety of projects, including forest conservation efforts and the capture of methane gas from dairy farms and landfills. 

ClimateSmart has snagged some prominent customers, including eBay, IKEA and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, but general interest in the program has been low. Although PG&E serves 15 million people, only 30,000 customers—or 0.6 percent of those eligible—have enrolled in the program. The unemployment rate in California is at 12 percent, and many households are struggling just to stay on top of bills.

The program is set to expire at the end of this year, and low enrollment numbers could mean the end of ClimateSmart. PG&E officials have appealed to the California Public Utilities Commission to extend the program, but they face strong opposition from the Utility Reform Network (TURN). 

TURN officials say the program is not a good deal for customers and should be cut. Although only some customers participate in the program, all PG&E users subsidize the cost through higher rates. So far PG&E has allocated $12 million for marketing and advertising for the program but has collected only $4.5 million from customers. 

What do you think? Have you ever purchased carbon offsets? If not, would you consider it?

Levi Strauss is partnering with Goodwill to start the Care Tag for Our Planet program, a campaign that aims to stop clothing from ending up in the landfill.

The Care Tag for Our Planet program encourages consumers to wash their jeans in cold water, line dry them when possible and donate them to Goodwill when they no longer want them. Photo Courtesy Levi Strauss. 

Starting in January, tags on Levi Strauss clothing will encourage consumers to donate worn, unwanted clothes to Goodwill. Levi Strauss Company hopes the new tags will help deter the 24 billion pounds of clothing that end up in U.S. landfills each year.

The tags will also recommend that the clothes be washed in cold water and line dried whenever possible to help save energy.

The decision to put energy-saving messages on the tags came from the findings of a 2007 life-cycle assessment conducted by the company. The assessment followed a typical pair of Levi’s 501 jeans though its entire lifecycle—from growing the cotton to final disposal. The study found these results: 

CO2 emissions  

The emissions of just one pair of 501 jeans, including cotton production, transportation and washer and dryer use, amounted to more than 32 kilograms of CO2—the equivalent of 78 miles driven by the average U.S. automobile. 

Energy consumption  

Througout its life, one pair of jeans consumes more than 400 megajoules of energy, the equivalent of powering a personal computer for 556 hours. 

Water consumption  

One pair of jeans uses more than 3000 liters of water—the equivalent of 53 seven-minute showers—for cotton production, manufacturing and washing. 

The assessment found that 45 percent of water use occurs during the consumer’s home washing. But 49 percent of the water use happens during the cotton-growing phase. To address this problem Levi joined the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), an organization to improve the environmental and social impacts of cotton cultivation.  

How do you reduce the environmental impact of your clothing? Tell me about it in the comments section.