If you don’t quite have the green fingers to grow your own food just yet but want to take small steps in creating a more sustainable household, then read on for my 5 easy ways to be more eco friendly in the kitchen.
1. Switch to reusable dish sponges
Most kitchen sponges are made from synthetic materials which means that they aren’t biodegradable. Think about those pesky yellow and green sponges you find everywhere, they don’t last for very long, so that’s a lot of sponges being thrown away each year into landfill.
Consider trying reusable kitchen sponges. They are better for your wallet and the environment. I’m a fan of these double sided sponges from Lakeland which are machine washable and come in fun colours.
2. Consider a washing up liquid subscription
For a little while now we had been using a local zero waste company to refill several empty plastic washing up liquid bottles that we had. Unfortunately they were proving to be a little unreliable and I got fed up with having umpteen empty bottles lying around… so enter Smol.
Smol will send you one empty bottle and a refill carton with your first order and then each subsequent washing up liquid delivery consists of four refill cartons. You can control how frequently you receive your refills and they do seem to last a long time. They also have many other eco-friendly products available on subscription, some of which aren’t shown on their website until you start your first subscription.
3. Reuse your household spray bottles
Kitchen cleaner, bathroom cleaner, glass cleaner etc all come in plastic bottles with spray triggers. Recycling facilities for those triggers isn’t available everywhere, plus plastic has a limited number of times it can be recycled anyway. So what can you do? Consider EcoDrop spray refills from Ocean Saver. Simply rinse out your old bottle, drop one of these spray refills into it, top it up with water and shake. The plastic free refill then dissolves into the water and there you have your kitchen cleaner ready to go!
Ocean Saver pride themselves on their products being plant-based and plastic-free, meaning saving the ocean from plastic pollution and the harmful chemicals you find in other products.
4. Ditch the cling film
I hate cling film! It’s bad for the environment and it never does what you want it to do anyway. If you want to store leftovers in the fridge or wrap some picnic items to go, then consider reusing a lunchbox or a container that you already have in the house. Another great alternative to wasteful cling film is beeswax wraps. Beeswax wraps are reusable and plastic free. Although I am yet to try them, they are sure to be on my shopping list in the near future.
5. Avoid food waste
It is estimated that one third of all food produced goes to waste. The reason food waste is bad is not only the greenhouse gas emitted when it rots in landfill, but also all the energy and water that is wasted in growing, harvesting and transporting the produce.
Freezing leftovers is great. As is cooking what you need, from scratch. But when you’ve had a busy day sometimes you need a little inspiration. Hello Fresh are a food box subscription where you choose which recipes you would like to try and they deliver the perfectly portioned ingredients to your door. Portioned ingredients = no food waste. The food also has a short supply chain, meaning less packaging and repackaging, as well as fewer CO2 emissions from transport and storage.
I recently tried Hello Fresh where I opted for all vegetarian meals and was able to taste cuisines from Italy to Thailand to Mexico!
If you want to try Hello Fresh, then my readers can get 60% off their first box, 25% off the next two boxes plus free dessert for life. Just follow my link to the Hello Fresh website and use the code QUIRK60. You can pause or cancel your subscription any time.
