by Molly McGuire

Created on: November 09, 2009

For starters, scrap the individual plastic water bottles. Though grocery stores offer tempting sales on cases of bottled water, you don't have to buy one. Nearly 4-billion pounds of plastic water bottles glut landfills or create litter around the world annually, requiring about 17-million barrels of oil to manufacture. Most health advocates acknowledge a problem with maintaining purity of bottled water in storage, and the PCBs and phthalates used in making plastics are receiving some negative publicity. Recently Canada banned baby bottles containing biphenyl-A (BPA). Tap water in most places is perfectly healthy, so if you don't have a filter system and guests snub plain H2O from the spigot, invest in a filter pitcher. There are several available with charcoal filters that produce tasty water you can serve in a washable, reusable glass. That's 24 plastic bottles that won't enter the garbage stream.

Now, what about your menu? Are you cooking with your own pots and pans, or are you bringing more temporary containers into your home? Remember, the deli employees are happy to put your purchases in your own containers, which may be sturdier than the store's version. Just place a few of these with your reusable grocery bags, and that store-bought potato salad you had no time to make will even look homemade.

If you've planned to cook your turkey in one of those carefree plastic cooking bags, you might think twice. Health advocates say cooking in plastic may not be healthy. During intense heating, plastic breaks down causing a chemical residue to transfer to the food creating a suspected carcinogen as well as an endocrine disruptor that may cause reproductive problems.

And while you're planning the menu, try to incorporate food from nearby sources. A farmer's market may have locally grown pumpkins and other produce that doesn't need to be trucked across the country using fossil fuels. Though packaged food may look enticing, you can avoid the preservatives and control the sugar, salt, and other ingredients in homemade dishes. Cooking the food "from scratch" at home saves packaging, and gives you a chance to experiment with that pumpkin pie recipe from Aunt Sally.

Decorations are always an integral part of any Thanksgiving celebration. If you really want to go natural, stay away from supermarket bouquets unless they sport an organic label. Most of the colorful commercial cut flowers available in grocery stores come from outside the U.S., grown in countries with few restrictions

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