It doesn't take a lot to significantly cut down on waste in the kitchen. We've made a few changes in our habits, and, suddenly, hardly anything is going into the trash. It feels good to know we're sending very little to the landfill.
What You Need
Notepad
Pencil
Bowl
Recycling bin
Cardboard box
Glass containers
Rags
Cloth Napkins
Trader Joe's Amazing Kitchen Cloths
Trader Joe's Pop-Up sponges
Instructions
1. Kill your paper towel habit with rags, cloth napkins, and a set of Amazing Kitchen Cloths from Trader Joe's. We had a ratty old towel that we cut up into (almost) uniform little squares. We use these, or a sponge from trader Joe's to clean up our mess and wipe down the counter when we're done cooking. And we use homemade napkins for messy meals.
2. The most important step in creating an (almost) waste-free kitchen is a notepad and pencil. Seriously. If you prepare yourself in advance, you can shop so that you have little to no food waste. We shop once a week, usually on Sundays. Before we go, we plan our week of meals -- mainly breakfast and lunch, as breakfast generally consists of cereal. On one side of the list, we jot down the meals we plan to have each day of the week. We check the recipes, run the ingredient list against what we already have in our cupboards and refrigerator, and then write down what we'll need for the week on the left. This cuts down on duplicate purchases, over-buying food, and impulse buys. We get what we need for the week, and end up with very little leftover at the end of the week. Actually, we aim to under-shop, if anything, knowing we can always walk to the store during the week if we need anything last minute.
3. We keep a bowl on our kitchen counter when we cook. All the odds and ends, carrot peels, and garlic skins go in there. When we're done preparing dinner we stick the bowl in the freezer and take it down to the food scrap recycling bin after dinner is over. If you don't have food scrap recycling in your area, you can easily start composting, even if you live in a small space.
4. Packaging can pose a problem. Set up a recycling area that works for you. Depending on how your city/town collects recycling you may need a number of receptacles, or you may only need one. We have one large trash can we use for collecting our plastic and metal, and a cardboard box to collect paper and cardboard packaging.
5. Glass containers! Critical. We often intentionally make a little extra for dinner so that we have enough for lunch the next day. Use glass containers and you can avoid disposable plates at work, and you can safely heat your leftovers in the microwave.
Additional Notes:
If you stick to these 5 steps, very little should be going into the trash can every week. What else do you do to cut down on waste in the kitchen?
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Good post. I am working on reducing the amount of paper towels and napkins we use. We have been at it a couple of weeks. Although we are not perfect, it is surprising how easy it has been to reduce usage of paper products by about 80%. All we needed was lots of dishcloths and a commitment to change.
Might I also suggest, instead of a notepad to make your grocery list, save envelopes or even the tear-off portion of your Netflix DVD mailers. Both are great to reuse as scrap paper for grocery lists.
Also, as you noted "packaging can pose a problem," but try to reduce and reuse rather than just recycle. Look for bulk options when you shop. (Trust me, I'm nowhere near perfect on this one but I'm working on it.)
We use those Trader Joe's sponges, they are the best and we throw them in our compost pile, along with any paper towels we might use....but we have a big compost pile too.
I just put my grocery list in my iphone or blackberry. I keep a notes section that already has the aisle numbers for the food coop listed and then I just plug in what I want under those aisles. Slightly OCD but it works for me.
We don't use paper towels. But food packaging is a big part of our trash, and most of it is not recyclable. I want to cut down. Any good tips or sites I can check out to help me shop better (p.s. real small budget too)?
The compost bowl idea reminds me of how horrified I am by Rachel Ray's "garbage bowl". Drive me nuts - she's throwing out food scraps that could so easilu be composted! And she's encouraging others to do the same, at $40 a pop:
http://www.amazon.com/Rachael-Ray-Brick-Garbage-Bowl/dp/B000VQDGH2
Or as an alternative to composting everything, save those garlic skins and carrot peels, put all your vegetable trimmings in a gallon Ziplock bag and make vegetable stock. Once the bag is full, I take a weekend day to simmer the veggies in a large pot of water and have veggie stock, which saves having to but it pre packaged.
I've started using cloth baby diapers in lieu of paper towels. They are relatively cheap, easy to wash, and have the same feel as a paper towel.
one of the key factors in reducing food waste in our kitchen is taking stock of what we still have in the kitchen (not mentally, but with pen and paper or BB or iPhone) BEFORE we make our meal plan. leftovers get eaten or reused in a new dish and we make sure that our pantry stock of beans and grains get used.
PrettyKitty - While I agree it's ridiculous that she markets a "garbage bowl" for $40 (when really any bowl would do)...the product description actually does mention using it for compost as well:
"Handy bowl in brick red for storing scraps destined for garbage/compost while prepping meals "
A small thing, but at least it's acknowledged. But she should promote that on-air as well (composting...not the bowl! :) ).
But the food scraps still break down, even if they're not being composted. No potato peel lasts forever. I think that's not a pressing concern.
Packaging is an issue, so if you can buy in bulk, with others if you can't use a huge amount yourself, you save $$ and waste less.
I found composting a pain in the *** because we got so many fruit flies until I started putting my compost in the freezer. I bought a small garbage can with a flip-top lid at the dollar store. I only need to walk out to empty it about once a week, it never smells, and NO fruit flies. I lose a little space in the freezer, but that reminds me to eat what's in there.
Palmetto - I'm no expert, but I think the issue is that food in a dump breaks down very, very slowly. The example I heard from a lead researcher on it was a bun he found that was 60 years old. Because things break down so slowly the dump fills up much faster than it would if all the organic waste was first removed.
The problem with dumps is that all the stuff underneath the top layer has little or no access to oxygen, which is a necessary part of the decomposition equation. No oxygen = potato peels and newspapers that last forever.
I grew up in a household that composted, and I still have no idea what to do with my food scraps (the ones I don't save for stock) now that I can't compost. Disposal? Trash?
I once quit buying paper towels, and then, after a while, started buying them again. I would love to quit using them, but my rag piles, cloth diaper piles, and laundry piles can get pretty overwhelming for a mother of 3. Maybe someday.
@splim - I can't compost either since I rent my house. What I do is save some big yogurt containers and my spaghetti sauce jars. When I have kitchen scraps, I throw them in there and let them marinate until the container gets full. Then I go outside to my flower garden, dig a hole, and dump my scraps into the ground. It helps put nutrients back into the ground and keeps my trashcan managable.
I use some kind of Vileda Sponge Cloth (from dollar store because cheaper) - it's made from cellulose - a natural raw material and it's super absorbent. I use this product for more than 20 years and it's my favorite in the kitchen for spills and other mishaps. It's very durable and you can wash it as often you wish.
I save vegetable scraps in a gallon-sized bag in the freezer (carrot peels, slightly-too-squishy tomatoes, the woody ends of asparagus). I also drain/rinse canned vegetables into this bag. When I have a full bag, I dump it all in a big pot with a few onions and make vegetable stock. THEN I compost the vegetables.
How funny!
My husband and I just bought the "KOTO" fabric (far right in first pic) from Joann's this past weekend and used it to recover the chairs of our vintage Swedish dining set. I plan on blogging about it in a couple of days (procrastinating), because I think it is a beautiful and super-cheap version of F. Schumacher's Chiang Mai Dragon fabric. I've got leftovers, so I'll probably use them for tea towels or napkins, thanks to your great idea! I used one piece to cover the light switch plate near the table, and it came out pretty cool... :)
FWIW, we replaced paper towels with cut up old shirts and socks. We have a separate bin in the laundry room (which is conveniently adjacent to our kitchen) for these kitchen rags. When the bin is full, we do a laundry load. Using a clean rag each time has encouraged us to wipe down our countertops since we don't have to worry about rinsing out the rag and hanging it to dry somewhere.
We still use paper towels to dry off raw meat & soak oil from a pan though.
We also find that we only have to take out garbage every 2-3wks now that we use a NatureMill composter. FWIW, I strongly recommend keeping the NatureMill out of any living area (i.e. in garage or on covered patio) -- it can get stinky when it's warm and you've just added a fresh load of scraps.
For the packaging that can't be recycled, & that has some form to it (versus a piece of plastic wrap), I use that as a mini-wastebasket -- instead of using a plastic garbage bag or paper bag.
I put the smaller unrecyclable items (like pieces of plastic wrap) in the mini-basket (example: waxed-paper milk carton) & dispose that in the outside garbage bin.
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Similar to the food-prep-scraps-to-soup-stock idea, a friend told me his dad would scrape off the dinner plate scraps & put all of it in a freezer bag (no matter what was for dinner) & cook up a delicious soup once a week.
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re: reasons for composting scraps: I remember learning that there are greater amounts of methane (greenhouse gas) produced at the landfills by table scraps, & somehow that didn't apply to a home compost situation (if I could only remember why!).