We are days, nay, hours away from the annual American bacchanalia that is Thanksgiving. A day later, hordes of rampaging consumers will storm the nation’s retail outlets in a valiant attempt to stave off another year of depressing sales numbers.

Just in time, Greenopolis provides tips for an Earth- (if not turkey) friendly Thanksgiving and a green Black Friday.

The Atlanta-based Coca-Cola company has unveiled a new container technology it calls PlantBottle — a fully recyclable PET plastic bottle containing up to 30 percent organic material. Specifically, the organic material being used in the initial run of bottles is a byproduct of sugar cane processing, though it seems other organic material could also be used. Coke is pitching the new containers as beneficial to the environment (its production requires a smaller carbon footprint) and a means of reducing petroleum dependency.

According to a Coke press release, the amount of organic material that can be used in the production of new bottles must be adjusted depending on how much recycled PET is also being used. “For example,” it says, “Denmark uses recycled content in its PlantBottle packaging. The combined plant-based and recycled content makes up 65 percent of the material, with 50 percent coming from recycled material and 15 percent from plant-based material.”

The ability to recycle PlantBottle alongside regular old PET certainly would seem to give it an advantage over Polylactic acid (PLA) and other environmentally friendly plastic alternatives. But it may take time to fully grasp any potential downsides of the technology.

Thoughts?

You bought that big, beautiful pumpkin before Halloween with hopes that it would make it through Thanksgiving — double-duty decorating, if you will. But after an early frost, it’s looking alarmingly deflated and you’re left with the dilemma of how best to dispose of the thing. Of course, as industry types, we know composting is the best option. The Daily Green provides some simple tips for effectively composting a pumpkin. Baseball bats are involved.

There was no shortage of trash talk exchanged between New York and Philadelphia during the recently concluded 2009 World Series (congratulations, Yankees … AGAIN). But that’s not the only trash traveling between the two cities.

This week, the New York Times featured a well-written story about New York’s mutually beneficial waste exporting relationship, in which it pays other municipalities — including the Pennsylvania communities of Morrisville, Tullytown and Falls Township — to accept its refuse. Rather than resent the constant stream of trash from New Yorkers, residents of these Phillies-loving towns reap rich financial benefits. They even exhibit pride in their modern landfills, a far cry from New York’s maligned Fresh Kills landfill, the closing of which necessitated this arrangement in the first place.

Interesting read.