THE United Nations released a climate change report in October forewarning of global catastrophes (wildfires, bad floods, droughts) that could start by 2040 unless we reduce greenhouse gases NOW.
What can you and I do? According to Zero Waste Home, here’s what we can do in the kitchen:
- Swap paper towels for reusable rags, swap sandwich baggies for kitchen towels or stainless containers, drop garbage liners all together (wet waste is compostable anyway).
- Bring reusable bags
(dry goods), jars
(wet items such as meat, deli, fish, cheese, oil, peanut butter) and bottles
(liquids: oil, soy sauce, shampoo, conditioner).
- If you cannot find it in bulk, find a supplier (bring your jar to the ice cream shop, a pillow case to the bakery for your bread, or your bottles to the winery/brewery)… or make it (salad dressing, hot sauce, jams, hummus, cookies, canned tomatoes).
- Shop the farmer’s market: they’ll take the egg carton and the berries baskets back for reuse. Your veggies will also most likely be free of plastic and stickers there too.
- Learn to love your tap water.
- Use bulk liquid
castile soap as a dish/hand cleaner, baking soda as a scrubber (in a stainless Parmesan shaker
) with a compostable cleaning brush. Purchase dishwasher detergent in bulk.
- Turn your trash can into a big compost keeper. Use your tiny compost keeper as a trash can (on the market, the sizes for these seem to be reversed).
- Reinvent your leftovers before they go bad. Go thru your recipe binder/box and only keep the recipes that can be achieved with zero waste in mind.
- Invest in a pressure cooker
(halves the cooking time).
- YOU CAN ALSO… Reuse single-side printed paper for grocery shopping and errands list, use your lettuce cleaning water to water plants, open your oven after baking in the winter (cool your oven, warm your house)…
Visit https://zerowastehome.com/tips/
or https://www.ecowatch.com/reduce-your-carbon-footprint-2615358557.html