Five Ways To Have A Sustainable And Greener Kitchen!

While we all understand the need to make our kitchens more eco-friendly, we hardly know where to start. Is eating more greens a way of making our kitchens more eco-friendly? It sure is, but then there is more to it.

Eliminating toxic chemicals, reducing waste, and using better cleaning habits, with environmentally-friendly equipment can help you take a significant step toward building a healthy kitchen. With a bit of common sense and experience, you will have a sustainable kitchen before knowing it! Here are some tips to follow to make your job easier.

Choose Cookware With Care

We hate to break this to you, but your long-enduring love affair with Teflon must finally end. Yes, the jury is still out on that one, and yes, there would be endless debates on those. But when you are dumping chemicals from your kitchen for good, you should get rid of the non-stick pan too.

Choose something that has been passed down generations, such as the iron skillet. Buy long-lasting kitchen stuff, such as cloth towels over the paper, steel over plastic any day. Also, while it is tempting to buy all the kitchen gadgets that sit prettily on shop shelves, use your judiciousness to choose the one, that you need to the one you can do without.

Make Cooking More Energy-Efficient

Make the best use of the oven as much as possible, try and cook more things at once. Ensure you cook while putting lids on all the pots and make sure they are close-fitting. This will ensure that the heat does not dissipate, thereby saving energy.

Pressure cookers are another way of making cooking more energy-efficient. They can save cooking time by almost 70 percent. You can also experiment more when it comes to food and try something like raw food if you pair it with cooked food. You can reduce energy expenditure and do a favor for your health as well. Overcooking any food, for that matter, kills most of the nutrients.

A Break From Frozen Foods

Cook your food, most of the time and avoid pre-prepared and frozen foods. When you reheat food and reheat it all over again, you reduce the quality of the food. So, focus on cooking fresh foods and if you are really into it, try and find out where you source the food from.

You can grow your fruits and vegetables and put your composted kitchen waste to good use. A bit of DIY hacks in your kitchen can work wonders, too, such as skipping the chemical-laden cleaning agents, use the kitchen favorite, vinegar, and baking soda instead. Instead of choosing bottled water for a filter pitcher or a tap filter, small steps like this produce big results.

Buy Local

What you eat, and what you bring to your kitchen holds tremendous importance. So instead of just focusing on gadgets and appliances, think of opting for local and fresh produce. Reduce food miles. The more your food travels from the farm to your table, the more nutrient-deficient it is. While you may be craving Chilean grapes, but if it is too far away from where you are now, the food will be of no use for you.

Instead of getting a fresh apple right from a farm near, you can taste divine. Just biting into a juicy apple will transport you straight to gastronomical heaven. In contrast, foods that are sourced from far away places will have all the preservatives, biocides, and other stuff that your health is better off without. Go for community-supported agriculture, buy from local markets, or get your kitchen foodstuff straight from the farmers.

Try Composting

Composting isn’t all scary, you know, and it may be your entire family’s effort to reduce carbon footprint. Know what you can compost in your kitchen. You can compost fruit and vegetable waste in particular. Buy a kitchen compost pail and a food bucket. Place the old food in your compost pail. This compost pail can help in faster decomposition in the food.

This can serve as a good soil conditioner, enhancing the nutrient value of the soil considerably. Once you are used to it, we are sure you will get the hang of it and eventually become a pro at it. So, here are some easy ways to start to make your kitchen greener! Focus on these points, and you will soon be able to make a small yet significant step to make your kitchen more eco-friendly. Of course, it helps maintain the ecological balance.