The kitchen is one of the places where we can all make a big difference in terms of sustainability. We’ll show you how to reduce kitchen waste and food waste with a few easy tips, including clever planning and cooking, plus eco-friendly food storage and food prep.
How to reduce food waste with proper planning
Reducing kitchen waste starts at the planning stage. You can follow a step-by-step process to help increase your environmental sustainability in the kitchen:
- Do a stock-check of your cupboards/fridge/freezer so you know what you have.
- Make a meal plan that uses food you already have.
- Write a shopping list for the other items you’ll need for your meal plan.
- Only buy what you need.
How to reduce waste in the kitchen with eco-friendly food storage
Now that you have just the food you need, how can you continue with your goal for sustainability in the kitchen? By storing it in an environmentally friendly way, that’s how! That includes how you store it and what you store it in:
- Store food with the closest expiry date at the front, so it’s used first.
- Freeze food that you know will go past its expiry date before you get the chance to use it.
- Learn how to store food correctly so that it keeps for as long as possible. For example, according to Food Print, potatoes, onion and garlic should be stored in dry, dark places while apples, peppers and berries should be stored away from bananas and tomatoes, which produce ethylene gas that will spoil surrounding foods.
How to reduce food waste with clever cooking
Reducing kitchen waste continues with the way you cook it. Here are a few tips on how to ensure less food goes in the bin:
- Keep an eye on expiry dates and use fruit and veg that’s approaching theirs in soups and smoothies, which you can then freeze.
- Research recipes for leftovers so you can enjoy all of the food you have cooked, without extra portions going to waste.
- Use veg scraps (peels/stalks/ends) to make homemade stock or put them in the compost heap to make fertiliser for your garden.
Hw to reduce kitchen waste with eco-friendly food prep
When preparing food, you can make smart product choices to help your food last longer. For example, using a sheet of kitchen towel to absorb any excess water in your salad drawer will help those leaves and veggies stay crisp and last longer.
You can also swap your plastic sponges for strong kitchen paper, to help remove grease and dirt from your chopping boards after prepping food on them.
Tip: Plenty kitchen towel is super strong when wet, which means it’s wettable, wringable, and scrubbable! You’ll find one sheet is often enough to tackle a big job.
Sustainability in the kitchen: alternatives to buying plastic
There are many alternatives to plastics that you can try at home:
- Use refills of washing up liquid etc. rather than buying a new bottle (and squeeze out every last drop).
- Swap plastic bags for reusable canvas shopping bags when you buy groceries.
- Swap pre-packed food in plastic containers for loose food items in paper bags.
- Swap cling film for a sheet of Plenty kitchen towel over salads/bowls of food put out to serve.
How Plenty is helping with environmental sustainability in the kitchen
At Plenty, we’re committed to reducing our environmental impact, while caring for your well-being too. Through innovation in product, packaging and production, we’re finding ways to be more sustainable as a company. For example, our super strong kitchen paper is wringable and scrubbable whilst also being biodegradable!
As well as having super strong kitchen paper, Plenty has also:
- Saved 500 tonnes of core board a year since 2013 after replacing the two-ply cores with one-ply cores;
- Reduced our carbon footprint by 2% since we doubled the number of sheets on a roll from 50 sheets to 100 sheets;
- Set a target to save 64 tonnes of plastic a year by reducing the thickness of the films on our packs.
With these tips on how to reduce waste in the kitchen, you can make the hub of your home an eco-friendlier place.
