6 Surprising Ways to Make your kitchen More eco-Friendly

It’s surprising the ways you can make your kitchen more eco-friendly. You can easily incorporate these routines into your daily activities around the kitchen without a lot of disruption, plus you’re including eco-friendly ideas that help improve your life and the preservation of the environment. What could be better? Here are 6 ways you can make your kitchen more eco-friendly for you, your family and the environment.

Composting

Once you know the tricks of composting, you’ll never toss food scraps and related items in the garbage can again. Composting is disposing of organic material that deteriorates into fertilizer. Use a compost bin to start your collection of future fertilizer. You can compost vegetables, fruits, eggshells, coffee grounds, newspaper and, yes, hair. Take the fertilizer to a local site that processes your compost bin materials. They’ll transition it back to soil.

Recycle

Besides composting, you can recycle several items from your kitchen. Find out how recycling works where you live and what the recycler takes. Also, learn whether any of it requires sorting before you can recycle it and where you can take items for recycling. Almost every town contracts to pick up recycled materials. You can arrange for recyclables to be picked up at the curb.

Recycling in the kitchen is easy, as all you have to do is find a spot that’s convenient (near the sink or under it). Put a small garbage pail there to put the recyclables in and every couple of days take the pail to the larger recycling container outside.

Recycling also includes doing something positive about the packages and containers that produce mountains of garbage. You’ll want to look for alternatives to overly packaged items. Buy items in bulk that are free of packaging, like beans, coffee, nuts and similar items. Purchase larger drink items rather than smaller juice boxes and buy larger product sizes as opposed to individually wrapped items. You can’t avoid food packaging entirely, but when you find that you’re accumulating cereal and cracker boxes, plastic bottles and meat and poultry trays, try to recycle them.

Green Dish Washing

When you wash dishes in a dishwasher, you’re saving over 30 percent in water usage than if you wash them by hand. Fill a side of the sink with soap and water and the other side with water for rinsing. You don’t have to run the faucet either. You’ll probably use about half the water that a dishwasher does, though this only works with a small amount of dishes that need washing.

If you’re going to use a dishwasher, you want to wait until the dishwasher is full of dishes to run it. When you run a load that is full, you’re using less energy and water than when you run two separate loads that are half full.

A lot of newer dishwashers today have a cycle that’s economically driven. They are made to conserve energy and water. With this option, you’re saving and you can turn off the dry heat option and save even more. You can also allow the dishes to air-dry and eliminate using any heating option at all.

Smart Cooking

You can cook smart by not using a full-size oven for all your cooking. As an alternative, switch your cooking to a toaster oven, microwave, convection oven or even an instant pot multi-cooker or slow cooker. For example, an instant pot uses considerably less energy compared to an oven or stovetop. It uses around 70 percent less energy and it cooks food a lot faster. You’ll use less energy with any of these other methods.

With a microwave oven, you’ll use around 50 percent less energy than with q conventional oven, plus it gives off less heat. Using a microwave is also helpful in eliminating heat in the kitchen, particularly in the summer, so you are saving on air conditioning costs as well; however, if you’re heating larger meals, you’ll probably want to use a conventional oven.

Organic Hemp Coffee Filters

Wasting paper coffee filter after filter is wasteful and not eco-friendly, especially when there are reusable ones for both pour over and drip coffee makers. They’re made of organic hemp and are much more eco-friendly to use as you can rinse, dry and reuse them multiple times, plus they hold up for months and show little wear. If you’re not sure whether your coffee equipment is up to the change, get your espresso makers from Qavashop. There is sure to be compatible equipment that works with the filters and saves on other costs. You can compost those coffee grounds from your reusable filters, too.

Refrigerator Foolishness

You don’t want to stand in front of a refrigerator and browse for food as leaving the door open for periods of time wastes valuable energy.

You also want to make sure that a refrigerator door seals. Test the door to see if it’s closing properly as waste occurs through loss of cold air and valuable energy. You can test the rubber seal that goes around the door by closing a paper bill in it and then check it to see whether it pulls out easily. If you can pull it right out, the door is likely leaking cold air. You can either replace the seal or have it repaired or replaced by a professional.

If you have an older refrigerator or freezer in another area of your house or outside in a garage, they can be real energy users. You want to think about the amount of space you need for food and drink and purchase a replacement energy efficient model that’s adaptable to your needs. Then again, perhaps you don’t actually need the added refrigerator space. Running a large refrigerator uses less energy than keeping two smaller refrigerators running.

There are many other ways to make your kitchen eco-friendly, but the information provided here is a good start. Give each of the six ways a try to see if you aren’t surprised with the savings you’ve made towards a more eco-friendly kitchen.