According to the EPA, in 2013 Americans had a daily waste generation of 4.40 pounds per person. Even if you don’t live in America, reducing your daily amount of waste will benefit everyone. Over time, the amount of waste produced by an individual accumulates to an immense quantity.
One place that you can reduce waste from in your home is your kitchen. Whether you are using single-use plastics, throwing away excess food, or even find yourself at the grocery store more often than you would like, there are plenty of ways that you can reduce your kitchen waste.
Use Quality Cookware:
One of the best things that you can do to reduce waste in your kitchen is to use cookware that you are not going to throw out after a year. You need cookware, like a Gotham Steel Frying Pan, that will stay with you for years. Using durable materials will save you money in the long-run, while cutting down on the amount of waste in your kitchen.
Compost:
Regardless of where you live, you can still have a compost bin. They are available in a wide range of sizes, so you can find ways to meet your needs. Often, they will easily fit under a kitchen sink for easy access. They even make electric composters to fit in your kitchen.
Once you have gotten into composting, you can use the rich soil that comes out of it to fertilize your own garden, which leads us to our next suggestion.
Grow Your Own Food:
If you can, growing your own food is the ultimate saver. No truck needs to deliver your food to you or a store when it is just in your backyard. You also do not need to waste gas getting to a store.
If you live in a smaller space, there are still some home growing options available that can be set up easily in your kitchen.
Consider Packaging:
Packaging often produces the most waste in a kitchen. Everything seems to be wrapped in plastic these days. Consider what your product is wrapped in before you buy and whether it is compostable or recyclable.
Don’t Buy Food You Won’t Eat:
It is incredibly easy to get caught up in diet trends. Your heart might be in the right place as you buy a pound of spinach, but if you are not going to eat it, it will wind up in the trash or compost bin. This is a cycle for many people, who buy vegetables with good intention, but then never touch them.
You can break the cycle of waste by purchasing foods you will eat. You can also get many vegetables frozen and might have better luck throwing some frozen spinach in a smoothie.
Put in a Garbage Disposal:
Garbage disposals can get rid of a lot of your perishable kitchen waste efficiently and safely through the use of your septic system. The process is convenient and an environmentally-friendly method of discarding your food scraps.
As there are quite a few options out there, you should make sure you are reviewing the very best garbage disposals on the market to avoid any confusion. You will need to consider your household size to get an idea of the level of power that you need to get out of it.
Ditch the Single-Use Coffee Maker:
We all love the idea of single-use coffee makers. They are fast and efficient but unfortunately are also incredibly wasteful. Not only do you wind up with excess trash and more plastic when you use one, but the cost adds up as well.
Instead, you can make coffee using grounds. This can also be done in little time and with cumulatively less waste. They even make reusable pods, so you can still use your single-cup machine without needing the single-use pods. You even can play with more coffee recipes, preventing you from stopping in at a coffee drive-through and generating even more waste.
Label Any Leftovers:
We have all gone to the refrigerator and pulled out a container of food and questioned whether it was still good. It is easy to ignore leftovers or refuse to eat them, assuming that they have expired. If you label leftovers with the date and what it is, you and whomever you live with will be more likely to eat it.
It is ideal if your storage containers are glass. Then, you can write on them with a dry erase marker that will easily wipe off when you are ready to wash the container. If you do not have storage containers, you should invest in some.
If you are thinking that you do not have enough kitchen space to allow for storage, you might want to consider some kitchen space saving techniques that will free up your cupboards. Once you have extra cupboard space, you will be able to store any non-perishable items there. Perishable items should be canned or frozen. Remember that even canned and frozen foods have expiration dates, however, so do not forget about them.
Replace Your Paper Towels:
If your family has children, it is likely you have spent a lot of money on paper towels over the years. They are a quick, fast way to clean up spills, wrap food for microwaving, and even to act as a napkin for sticky fingers. Yet, all of that is a lot of wasted paper.
Instead, you can purchase bamboo cloth reusable paper towels if you still like that feeling, or you can opt for cloth towels to use the same way. Both types will need to be washed, but you will be purchasing a lot fewer paper towels as a result.
Recycle:
This last one might be a no-brainer, but recycling is still also a wonderful way to reduce the amount of waste that you are producing in your kitchen. You can check with your local recycling facility to see what products they accept, the condition they expect them in, and where you can deposit them.
In your home, you should have a convenient set of small bins that will allow you to divide up your recycling in a way that your recycling facility will accept it. This might be one or several bins, depending on your situation. Having them in a convenient location will make it easier for you to stick with recycling.
Taking any of these steps will greatly reduce the amount of waste that comes out of your kitchen.
