Those true costs are a real turkey...

It’s the season of excess. It’s also the season of waste. US residents toss out 25% more stuff between their Thanksgiving (end of November) and New Year’s than any other time in the year. There’s a reason the City of Saskatoon goes back to weekly collection over the Christmas season after prudently switching to bi-weekly for the otherwise lower-waste winter months.

All this food, packaging, wrapping paper and STUFF, in addition to filling up landfills, has a cost. All kinds of costs. First, there’s the cost to you. The $35 you have to shell out for that huge Christmas turkey really costs $35 plus the taxes you had to pay on that income, plus the cost of having a job (time and money getting to work, work-related expenses), plus the cost of getting to the grocery store and back.

The grocery store had to keep the turkey frozen (and hopefully didn’t damage the ozone layer trying to do so) and greenhouse gases were generated in getting it to the grocery store from wherever it was slaughtered. The slaughterhouse needs to be heated and uses energy in its production (more greenhouse gases) and generates wastes, which could have various homes (landfill, compost, gasification), depending on the system.

The facility where the turkey was grown also uses energy in heating, embodied energy in the turkey feed (e.g. all the work that goes into the production of the grain or other feed), and generates waste (turkey poop), which again needs to find a home (and hopefully doesn’t end up in our water supply).

All that just for a turkey that’s hopefully produced not too far from where it will be consumed. Don’t get me started on all the goods produced overseas that damage the water, land and air that other folks use, at the same time as they keep folks on the edge of survival so that we can have cheap stuff (sorry, it sounds like I was getting a little started there…)

(Source: Dec. 2006 WasteWatch)

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