Spring greening

Make your kitchen more sustainable

By Liz Crain

May 20, 2008

Forget spring cleaning this year and try for a little spring greening instead. Tea, of the San Francisco food blog Tea & Cookies, recently did just that and posted about all of her eco-conscious changes in her home, many of them kitchen-based. Here’s why:

Sometimes I get scared over the state of the world — the food shortages, the climate change. The problems seem overwhelming, the solutions out of reach. When that happens I try to look at my part of the puzzle, what impact I have in the situation. I’m a little late for Earth Day, but I’ve been wanting to write about my efforts to be greener and more sustainable in my home. Because if we don’t care for the earth, where are we going to get our food?

Like Culinate’s Nancy Schatz Alton, Tea has reconsidered food storage and made the move from plastic to glass in her kitchen because it’s durable, reusable, and won’t leach anything harmful into her food.

Other eco food changes that she’s made include:

• No more liquid soap. Bars of soap require less packaging.
• No more liquid dishwasher soap. Powdered-soap containers are biodegradable.
• No more bottled water. Too much plastic.
• No more paper or plastic grocery bags. Her own grocery bag is durable and reusable.
• Less packaged and more bulk food.
• Reuse bulk bags and twist ties. Tea crosses out the old code and writes the new one on her twist ties.
• Compost food and paper waste.

And what do all these green changes add up to?

I’ve reduced my garbage output to one shopping bag of trash every other week. Seriously, I’ve been known to put out the garbage for collection only once a month (with composting there is no food waste in the garbage so it doesn’t smell). That makes me feel pretty good.

Check out the 50-plus comments for all sorts of other eco-kitchen ideas.