I know it may come as a shock to some of you that a jerk like me actually cares about the environment, but I do. Think of it this way – caring about the planet is just another way to be disgusted with other people, which is one of my favorite things to do.
I am generally pretty lazy, and easily grossed out, so you’re not going to come to my house and find a compost pail. And, I am a city slicker so you will also not find a garden in my non-existent back yard (although you will find dog-sized rats and a gaggle of filthy-faced, totally unsupervised children playing with rocks).
What you will find, however, are some super simple ways I’ve found to cut back on the amount of stuff I throw away, the chemicals I was dump down my drain and the junk I put into my body. So I thought I’d share what I found, and encourage you guys to share your simple eco-kitchen tips. Mine are baking-centric, but feel free to take your comments all over the kitchen.
Ok first things first, you need to buy stuff to cook stuff. Most of my vegan friends will tell you that a meat-free, dairy-free diet (and baking grocery arsenal) is about as eco-friendly as it gets. Raising animals for food has a significant carbon footprint, there’s no denying it – so if you’re up for it, opting to not use animal products in your baking is a step in the right direction. Regardless of what you’re baking with it’s always a good idea to buy local and organic when ever you can. It is pricier in a lot of cases, so no one’s judging you if you can’t always do it, but organic foods are grown without chemicals, which is good for your guts and good for the planet. Oh, and while you’re shopping for those chemical-free odds and ends, don’t forget your reusable produce bags. Why bother trying to save the Earth if you’re stuffing your organic apples into a bunch of disposable produce bags?
Skoy- like paper towels, only not.
Keeping a clean kitchen while you bake is kind of obvious, but doing it without going through a bunch of paper towels can be tricky. I’ve cut back on my paper towel usage a lot recently by keeping some Skoy cloths on hand. The 4-color pack is ideal for the kitchen because you can designate different colors for different jobs to prevent cross-contamination. They’re machine washable, dishwasher safe, and they dry really quickly so they don’t get germy or stinky. If you want to zap bacteria just microwave it for a few seconds and once you’ve worn one out, it’s completely biodegradable. Obviously you can’t use these in the same way in a commercial kitchen due to health code regulations, but recycled paper towels
Lovely papers from BakeItPretty.com
I’ve posted in the past about the basic stuff all bakers should have so I’m not going to re-cover all of that, but I will update that info with some reusable and eco-friendly options you might want to look into. Cupcake papers are a must, and if you’ve been reading my blog at all you know that I am horribly addicted to expensive, colorful ones. Listen, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t eat meat – if the one shitty thing I ever do is buy beautiful cupcake papers I think I’m still on the right track. In my defense, paper cupcake wrappers are technically recyclable and in many cases, they are biodegradable. However, you can buy unbleached baking cups
The coolest, most boring thing ever.
Enough about cups – let’s talk about batter and frosting. I admit to being a former disposable pastry bag user. They just seemed easier to deal with – but actually, I was being lazy. Get yourself a few piping bags
A sustainable path for plastic containers.
Wooden spoons and mixing bowls, luckily, have not yet become disposable. But there are a few options out there for those of you who are looking to make your baking more sustainable. On the mixing bowl tip, there are these brightly-colored Preserve nested mixing bowls. Preserve products are made with 100% recycled (and recyclable) #5 plastic – which is non-leaching and BPA-free. Here’s the thing about recycling – it only works when you actually BUY things made from recycled materials. So things like this are a really smart way to help contribute to that sustainable cycle. I recently replaced my splintered old wooden spoons (and other utensils) with bamboo
non-stick reusable baking mat
Probably one of the biggest waste-savers I’ve added to my kitchen is a silicone baking mat. It’s neither fun nor sexy, but it’s pretty much eliminated the need for parchment paper in my baking. Plus, I can just wipe off the mat instead of washing my whole cookie sheet so I use less water and soap.
This stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, you guys, but I’ve made a noticeable dent in how much crap I throw away and saved enough money on disposables to make buying this stuff well-worth it!
What do you do to make your kitchen more eco-friendly?
Disclosure: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.
We have stopped buying store bought bread and make our own. No worries about bread being transported from far away places. We also try to purchase locally produced grains when possible, which also eliminates the homemade bread’s carbon footprint.
Instead of using regular dish soap & detergents that release chlorine into the dishwasher’s steam and indoor air. I started using some without those ingredients. Ecover Ecological Automatic Dishwasher Powder and Shaklee Dish Wash. Also I recycle food scraps for my garden compost like coffee grounds, banana peels and egg shells!
We’re using brita water filters and drink filtered water. We stopped buying water/soda/etc. in plastic bottles long time ago. We do eat meat, however, we cut down and eat it only twice a month and from well-known sources. We’re buying local and seasonal products not only to cut down on carbon footprint, but mostly to support those great farmers here in Oregon. And I’m also baking my own bread mainly from my home-made sourdough. Next step will be cutting down on paper towels and parchment paper 🙂
1) no bottled water!
2)wash dishes when there is a full sink
3)bake with a silicone mat
4)try to buy local veggies & stick to seasonal foods
5)unbleached coffee filters
i don’t know if this counts as being eco-friendly, but, 6)avoid box mixes & ‘deli’made baked goods & salads
My mother is not what most people call earth-friendly but I’ve been slowly turning her over to the “green-side”. We now clean with earth friendly dish soap and floor cleaner, we don’t buy paper towels because we use regular fabric towels to clean our messes and we don’t use parchment paper. We try to buy local veggies and fruits and rarely eat out anymore. We are also beginning to grow our own herbs, lettuce and tomatoes instead of buying them and we stopped buying bottled water, we now drink it straight from the tap.
No bottled water, reusable shopping bags…I try to conserve my food and water as much as possible and not waste anything in addition to doing my best to buy locally and avoid wastefully packaged products!
I keep a small compost bin in the kitchen that I empty into our large outside compost a few times a week. We use organic dish soap and laundry soap (washing machine is in the kitchen) and organic dish towels.
I’ve recently become obsessed with recycling. I recycle everything I possibly can in my own way, because Utah’s recycling system isn’t the best.
I reuse egg cartons for planting herbs then I transfer them outside to my garden where we grow everything from tomatos to herbs. We freeze & dry all of our vegetables and herbs so we can use them all winter long. I reuse all of the glass bottles/containers I get by using them as vases, etc. I save butter wrappers, and use them to line the bottom of cake pans (instead of using parchment paper).
I don’t buy bottled water. I have become a self-proclaimed “freak” about buying organic. I started buying organic Vegan sugar when I recently discovered that regular white sugar is made from sugar beets and not sugar cane AND it’s ground up with animal bone char. Sick!
About a year ago I stopped eating meat, for two reasons, it grossed me out, and I realized what a huge carbon footprint producing animals for food is creating. Plus all of the things the animals go through was pretty lame too!
* we use Skoy Cloths
* Britta pitcher
* garden at a community plot – including worms & composting
* silicone mat
* eco-friendly cleaning products (most of the time)
* reusable veggie bags
* cloth bags for groceries
* Rume bags for non-grocery shopping (folds up tiny so they’re always on hand)
* recycle like a mad woman (drives the hubs crazy)
No more cleaning chemicals! Vinegar and water, some borax. And my new Norwex cloths!!
Also no paper towels or napkins. Really throws people off when they ask for a paper towel and I say we don’t use them.
Re usable shopping bags.
Use the no heat dry function on the dishwasher.
When we had our son we didn’t buy 15 thousand bottles etc. He’s 18 months now–we have two bottles and two sippy cups. Works out just fine.
i- save all of the papers from butter/margarine and use them to grease pans when called for. somewhere in my head it is saving product and paper…and very very very slowly money.
-resuable most things…shopping bags, water bottles, my iced coffee cup, cloth napkins
-recycle everything that i can
-buy as much local as possible
-send my egg containers back to the farm that my friend gets our eggs from to be reused
i am sure there is more…but my coffee is not working fully yet.
Vegas isnt the most eco-friendly place to live, but we have a garden and compost, recycle, I religiously use my soda stream, we dont use plastic containers for leftover ( use glass that we got as a wedding present), use reusable shopping bags and try to free cycle as much as possible!
I do the very typical things nothing exciting! I love to composte my kitchen goods… Egg shells, coffee grounds whatever. I enjoy a couple chickens in the back yard who love table scraps and help me make composte. I use my tasty composte to make tasty foods in small pots in my small yard. It’s great that you can grow things with no yard. The only thing I got is rocks and my dirty kids out back playing with the rocks in our no grass yard!