Eating has become the thing that I look forward to the most on Christmas Day. But in the midst of all the gluttony it is possible to be a bit greener. Firstly, try not to buy too much food. I know myself that it is a hard to resist the mountains of food in the supermarkets at this time of year, but wasted food is a disaster for the environment. The population of the UK throw away about a third of the food they buy, I haven't been able to find a statistic for Ireland but I would imagine that it would be quite similar. The problem is that a lot of our food waste ends up in landfill and produces methane as it decays. As we are now all aware thanks to the belching cow phenomenon, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The more worrying and less obvious consequence, according to WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) Is the "embedded energy used to produce, package, transport and deliver the food to our homes which produces the equivalent of at least 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year."
If you are a meat eater I am sure that turkey and ham is a must. Try and source organic meat if possible, if you can't source organic try and buy locally to cut down on the food miles.
For vegetarians, again try and source local and organic produce. A lot of the ingredients for my own veggie feast can be found at Farmers Markets and health food stores. By shopping here as well as having the best variety of organic and local foods you can also avoid all the packaging that often comes with supermarket vegatables.
If you have a garden it's worth investing in a good compost bin so that you can compost your peelings to help your garden grow in the new year.
