You can make protect the planet by reducing waste in your kitchen. You can make so many small changes in your kitchen that significantly impact your food waste, energy bills, and ecological footprint. The following some ways that you have an eco-friendly kitchen.
1. Ditch The Toxic Cleaning Products
Start using non-toxic cleaning products. If easy to use, good smelling, eco-friendly brands are too expensive, try the old fashion way.
White vinegar (bacteria-, mildew killer), baking soda (against odors), and lemon juice (great smell) are 3 great ingredients for cleaning products. You can use them to clean your kitchen and the appliances in it. You can even use them to do laundry. Find recipes online on how to mix them for the best cleaning results.
2. Choose Loose Produce
Plastic isn’t a biodegradable material, so if you’re throwing plastic into a plastic garbage bag, that piece of trash will likely sit in a landfill for years and years.
One easy way to reduce your plastic waste is by grabbing produce without plastic packaging. Although plastic packaging can help when it comes to buying precut veggies, buying produce without the extra plastic packaging and giving yourself a little extra time to chop up the vegetables yourself will make a huge difference in the long run.
3. Buy Shelf-stable Items in Bulk
Oats, pasta, rice, nuts, even cereal are all foods that can last on the shelf for a long period of time. Instead of buying them in small packages every week or so, grab a larger box or bag of it so you don’t have to use up so much trash each time you want to buy that item.
Make sure to buy light reusable mesh bags that can hold these items when you fill up.
4. Check to See If the Packaging is Easily Recyclable
Cans for your beans and tuna are easy to recycle. Chip bags? Not so much. If you need to buy staples at the grocery store, try to find your favorite items in materials that you can easily recycle—like boxes, cans, or even heavy-duty plastic containers. Most plastic items will have a recycle sign and a number on it letting you know if it will recycle, and the type of material it is. Here’s a guide you can read up on before you hit the store.
Make sure to also clean out these materials before you recycle them! If you leave your cans and bottles dirty before recycling them, they likely won’t even be recycled—and can even stain or ruin the other materials in the recycling bin. Make sure to clean everything out so you can ensure that it will be recycled.
5. Stock Up on Reusable Materials
Take a good look at your trash. No, really! Your trash is the best indicator of your wasteful habits and can help you devise a list of the swaps you can make with reusable items in your kitchen. Are there lots of paper towels and napkins? Get reusable ones! Plastic bags from your food leftovers? Invest in some silicone ones! How about coffee cups, water bottles, and straws? You get the idea.
The process of replacing your items with reusable ones may be slow at first, and that’s okay. We can’t all become superheroes overnight! However, a great place to start is grabbing a few reusable items that you can throw in your bag when you leave for the day.
Even cleaning supplies can be reusable—like buying reusable spray bottles or bamboo dish brushes that can easily compost.
6. Plan Your Meals around Food You Already Have
Don’t be that person that buys a bag of lettuce and lets it rot in the back of your fridge. Use it before it goes bad! Before you plan your meals and make your grocery list for the week, take a look in your fridge and your pantry. Are there items that you need to cook up before they go bad? Plan your meals for the week around those items. Not only helps with the amount of waste you are producing during the week, but it will also save you money.
7. Start a Compost
While we all can try our best to use up the food in our fridge, there likely will be some food that will get wasted or even some food scraps that need to go in the trash.
Instead of throwing it in your garbage and letting the food rot (causing your trash can to get super smelly), invest in a compost bin! Your food scraps, coffee grounds, paper products, and much more can be thrown into your compost bin. Grab one that has a charcoal filter to help prevent odors, which also comes with a set of compostable bags for easy lifting and carrying your food scraps to the compost pile or collection in your city.
