It’s no surprise that water use increases with the holidays. Holiday meals often center around a large meal, like a Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham. Check out the facts below about water usage – you may find them surprising!
- A typical turkey dinner for 6 requires about 30,000 gallons of water.
- It takes 16,300 gallons of water to raise, process, and cook a turkey.
- Prime Rib for the holidays? Each 1 lb of red meat takes about 5,214 gallons of water to produce (varies globally with feed and the production system).
- Running water while preparing for and cleaning up after meals can use more than 2 gallons of water each minute.
- It takes about 4,776 gallons of water to raise a Christmas tree.
- To raise the 35 million Christmas trees U.S. families enjoy each year, a total of 167 billion gallons of water is required.
Have a Simply Green Holiday Season! 
We’ve collected a few easy ideas for celebrating the holidays while also celebrating the environment:
- Shop locally to reduce fuel use & increase the local economy!
- Decorate an outdoor tree for the birds. Use suet, peanut butter and seed to cheer your feathered friends.
- Switch to LED lighting- LED (Light Emitting Diode) holiday lights use up to 95% less energy than traditional holiday bulbs and last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors. Over a 30-day period, lighting 500 traditional holiday lights will cost you about $18.00 while the same number of LED lights costs only $ .19! As an added bonus, if one of the LED lights burns out the rest of the strand will stay lit.
- Support wildlife causes- some good ones locally are Biodiversity Research Institute, Maine Audubon, and your local land trust.
- Use a real tree, and recycle it after the holidays. Recycled trees can be used for mulch, compost, erosion control.
- Use fabric wraps or wrapping paper made from recycled paper- to save 100 gallons of water per pound of paper. In the US, the annual trash from gift wrap and shopping bags totals over 4 million tons!
- Donate to a local good cause- this gift uses no resources to produce and helps your community.
- Give your cleaning cupboard a non-toxic makeover. Resolve to choose products without antibacterial agents & chemicals that do not play nicely in our waterways and in our health.
- Take holiday photos with a standard camera, not a disposable one. Did you know that purchasing film in rolls of 36 instead of 12 reduces waste by 67% and saves about $4.00, or 40%? And it gives you extra frames for that special photo of Sebago Lake!
From the PWD family to yours; best wishes for a happy, healthy holiday season!
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