Americans throw away, on average, more than 300 million pounds of food at Thanksgiving. Families gather around the table to share turkey, swap stories and make memories. Yet the holiday carries a costly side effect for consumers, the environment and grocery store prices.

Thanksgiving tops the charts for waste, with millions of uneaten turkeys and side dishes headed for landfills. Photo credit: Depositphotos.

A feast for the trash

Thanksgiving’s wasteful impact stretches from farm to landfill. The non-profit ReFED estimates Americans trash the equivalent of more than $500 million in groceries in that single day. That figure has crept upward by about 1% annually, reflecting how the holiday continues to grow in scale.

More than half of all the Thanksgiving food waste comes from two stap

See Full Page