Top Tips Thursdays #1: Top 5 Sustainable Kitchen Tips


Eco Garden’s Top 5 Sustainable Kitchen Tips you can start today! 🌿

Welcome to Top Tips Thursdays! 🌲

You’ve been asking us for our best advise more & more recently on how to create a more sustainable home. Our goal has always been to make earth friendly living more approachable & attainable through our own environmentally conscious products.

Helping you make the difference is what we’re all about...So what better way to help you on your zero waste journey than a few quick & easy TOP TIPS which will help you start living more sustainably right away - with no compromise to your daily convenience 🌍

For our first Top Tips Thursday we are looking at some immediate changes you can make to your daily routine to grow a more Sustainable Kitchen.

1. DISHWASHER RULES 🌿 A brilliant & possibly surprising one to kick things off. All we’re asking you to do is Use Your Dishwasher! 

Did you know your dishwasher uses on average half the energy consumption when compared to hand washing all your kitchen goods? Not only that, using your dishwasher only uses a sixth of the water that hand washing does and it also uses much less soap! Over the course of a year that’s thousands of litres of water saved, not to mention cheaper energy bills at home & cheaper shops at the supermarket for washing up liquid!

PRO TIP; Make sure you wait until your dishwasher is full before switching it on (to an eco friendly mode if you have one).

We know not everyone has a dishwasher and some items need to be hand washed anyway - so, in that instance we have advice for you too. To reduce your consumption fill your sink with hot water and wash everything at once. Then rinse everything at once. This will reduce your water and energy consumption as well! This is one of our favourite top tips as it reduces your consumption, your carbon emissions and your home energy bills - saving you money & saving the planet.

2. DITCH PLASTIC BRUSHES 🌿 another super quick, easy sustainable switch is to ditch your plastic washing up & cleaning brushes in favour of wooden, natural alternatives. Reducing our plastic consumption is absolutely imperative if we are to reduce global plastic pollution & support sustainable industry.

Use ethically created, sustainably sourced products - such as our own Natural Wooden Kitchen Brushes and make your kitchen zero waste. When your wooden kitchen brushes have seen better days after serving your kitchen loyally you can simply pop them in your composting. And not only are brushes like ours sustainable, plastic free & 100% zero waste - by using products like these you are supporting a sustainable economy & challenging the power of the damaging plastic industry which is dangerously harming the planet.

PRO TIP; If you currently have plastic brushes in your kitchen you should still use them for their intended lifespan to avoid unnecessary waste before switching to your new sustainable alternatives and always cycle the plastic brushes wherever you can!

3. REUSABLE SOLUTIONS 🌿 are a key ingredient to creating a sustainable kitchen. And they are so easy to achieve! Some solutions you can almost certainly find around your home & others are so easily acquired to help make your kitchen zero waste.

There’s so many ways to green up with reusable solutions & it’s super fun to get really creative with it - but here’s a few of our favourites from both things you can find around your home & things you can find on our store!

First up, everyone loves a takeaway. Whether it’s a guilty once in a blue moon pleasure or a treat to celebrate the arrival of a Friday night - we all love to indulge. And that shouldn’t have to change in order to be more eco friendly. Likewise, we can not wait for our favourite takeaways to follow our earth friendly trend. Though some do make the effort to pack their goods in conscious plastic free packaging, there’s still always more work to be done and the majority still arrive in plastic containers.

But we can combat this...if you favourite takeaway delivers your food in plastic dishes with sealable lids - DO NOT throw them away! DON’T even recycle them! These plastic trays can be washed and reused and become the perfect keep fresh solution for cooked and fresh food. It’s so simple, but you’d be amazed how such a useful tool is so easily overlooked. If we can reuse plastic items currently in existence then it reduces the demand for more and more to be made. (It may also be worth asking your favourite takeaways if they have any plastic free packaging alternatives once you have a few sealable dishes for home).

Secondly, consider a reusable solution to plastic pollutants in your kitchen like cling film and single use items like tin foil. Eco Garden’s Handmade Beeswax Wraps are the ideal reusable solution to keeping food fresh, on the move & in the home.

They’re naturally antibacterial and 100% compostable when you’re done with them! You can always rewax them too - making them even more reusable and sustainable. They come in three sizes and can wrap and keep fresh all kinds of fresh and prepared food from a loaf of bread to fresh fruit and vegetables to your picnic sandwiches. A super handy item to have in your kitchen whilst removing any plastic or single use waste! There’s so many more reusable solutions that we will probably do a whole post about this in more detail in the future! But these two for now will save you money and massively reduce your waste.

4. AVOID PRE PREPARED FOOD 🌿 - besides...it’s way more fun & healthier to make your own! Now, we know everyone has different scales of time to prepare their meals due to work or commitments, but if you can find the time to prepare your own food instead of purchasing pre made, pre packaged processed food it has a huge impact on the environment. Here’s why...

Besides knowing exactly what is going into your food and ditching processed, artificial preservatives and additives in your diet, by preparing your own food you are eliminating both transport pollution and plastic packaging.

Pick up your produce at local wholefood stores and markets wherever possible. This supports a small business and makes all the difference to the family that run it! Remember, whenever you buy something from a small business, someone somewhere does a little dance!

You’ll be supporting local farmers, artisan food creators and real people. You’ll feel great health benefits from preparing natural foods and see increased energy and better sleep as well as giving back to the planet through conscious choices. That’s the best dessert of all!

Reduce your plastic pollution and your external carbon footprint whilst increasing the benefits of your daily diet which comes with a whole range of obvious health bonuses.

5. CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION 🌿 is a huge subject and another Top Tip that’s well worth an entire post of its own. We’ll explore this in much more detail in the future however here’s a few quick tips to think about which will help you make a difference straight away.

Firstly, whilst so many earth friendly enthusiasts are vegetarian or vegan - that is not a requirement. If you eat meat, you can be equally conscious in your choices and your consumption. For example, do not buy mass farmed supermarket meat and instead support a small business through a local butcher.

Consider the ethics of the farming, both in terms of animal welfare and supporting small business. You’ll find the prices are not as different as some lead you to believe and their practice and business are significantly less wasteful and harmful than the mass market.

Also, reducing your meat consumption in general is a great place to start. Livestock production for example accounts for 20% of all human caused greenhouse emissions and almost 25% of water used globally in the agriculture industry. It’s an industry which requires a huge amount of energy and pollution to fuel and by cutting down the demand and consciously consuming then we can combat the spiralling, damaging consumption of meat across the world.

For example, take a steak that you buy for £5 in the supermarket. Check the label and see how far that steak has travelled just so you can conveniently eat it for cheap. If it’s come from Argentina to be served in your dining table in West Yorkshire, there’s almost certainly more conscious options available! The air miles, the water, the land conditioning, the freezing, the packaging. It just doesn’t justify the tiny price tag.

Instead, visiting your local butcher and purchasing a better quality, locally sourced steak for maybe £6 instead significantly makes that decision more conscious. Or better yet - try something vegetarian instead and reduce your consumption across the board. Choosing a vegetarian meal a couple of times a week over a meat alternative will greatly increase your external carbon footprint and help you do your bit to combat global consumption which is a huge drain on natural resources and global climate concerns.

This could be discussed all day long, so we can’t wait to hear your thoughts! As we say, we know the best solution is to cut meat entirely from an ethical and logical viewpoint. However not everyone is vegetarian and we want sustainable living to be INCLUSIVE - not exclusive.

 

This went on a little longer than we anticipated but with it being our first week of Top Tips, we wanted to cover a few bases and give out something for everyone! We hope you picked up a few useful tips and ideas and stay tuned for loads more coming week by week right here with Eco Garden 🌿

Let us know what you think of our Top Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen in the comments and share your own ideas with your fellow eco enthusiasts!

Peace & love all 🌍

Billy at Eco Garden 🌳

 

 


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