Our kitchens are without a doubt the biggest source of household waste. Food packaging is a big part of that, but it also comes down to our deeply ingrained habits around how we clean our kitchen space and store our food.
The great thing about habits is that once we identify them, we can take action to change them! If you can commit to breaking these three kitchen habits, you will notice significant waste reduction and money savings, too (who doesn’t like that?).
Going zero waste does not have to be expensive. You may need to invest in a few new tools and products, but the ones I suggest will pay for themselves very quickly and save you money over time.
I love the beauty and simplicity of natural tools and materials like cloth, glass, and wood! I really do enjoy my food prep, storage, and cleaning routine (not to mention garbage day!) so much more since I’ve made these simple changes.
Here are three wasteful habits to break right now and some simple zero waste kitchen alternatives to try:
Plastic wrap
I haven’t used plastic wrap in my kitchen for years, and I’m pretty sure I could suggest an alternative for almost any scenario. (Try me – leave your question in the comments!). An increasingly popular and beautiful alternative is beeswax coated fabric – or beeswax wraps. You can use them to cover bowls or dishes, wrap sandwiches, store cheese, meat, cut fruit and vegetables, etc. There are several local companies that sell beeswax wraps or you can make them yourself (here’s one diy beeswax wrap tutorial).
A few less elegant, but simple and affordable solutions include using a plate to cover a bowl or pot; dish towels or fabric bags to wrap or cover food; parchment paper (for rolling out pastry or pressing tortillas for example); silicone bowl covers; fabric sandwich and snack bags with zippers, snaps, or velcro; glass jars or glass / stainless steel / tupperware containers with snap on lids; and repurposed food packaging like waxed milk cartons or plastic yogurt containers.
Paper Towel
Paper towel is quite possibly the perfect symbol of the disposable culture we have built up over the last hundred years. I think they are one of the hardest kitchen habits to let go of completely. Paper towels seem so benign, so convenient, and easy to use.
In my research, I learned that paper towels were invented accidentally! It actually took a lot of marketing to persuade 1930’s households to ditch cleaning rags and instead spend their hard-earned money on disposable paper towels. Hopefully it will be easier to make the switch back to cloth!
It uses a huge amount of non-renewable resources to produce, package, and transport paper towels – namely fossil fuels and forests. It also takes a lot of water and energy, which contributes carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When they end up in the landfill, it generates more methane or greenhouse gas. Many brands of paper towel contain unlisted ingredients like dyes, inks, fragrances, chlorine bleach, formaldehyde, adhesives, and other chemicals – bad for your health and the environment. Not so benign.
The zero waste swap is simple – go back to using cloth! Cut up old bath towels to use when you need absorbency; use cloth napkins at the dinner table; use cotton cloths for wiping counters, cabinets, hands, little kids’ faces, etc. Drain bacon on a wire rack and reuse the grease. Newspaper works great for cleaning glass.
It might be easier to make this change if you have some paper towel stashed away for some of the grosser jobs (like pet accidents). Try unbleached recycled paper towels like these (bonus points if you can find some wrapped in paper not plastic).
Cleaning Supplies
Plastic sponges are an easy thing to quit with so many natural alternatives available that work just as well or better. Each and every plastic sponge you throw away ends up in the landfill – even if just one part of it is plastic.
If you like to use a sponge, you could simply swap a plastic one for a fully biodegradable sponge made from natural, plant-based fibers. Or, you could keep it simple and use cloths made of natural fibers, like cotton. Avoid synthetic materials, like microfiber, which are not recyclable and shed microplastics every time you run them through the washing machine.
I like to use sets of different colours or patterns and solids to keep track of which cloths I use for cleaning countertops, floors, washing dishes, wiping hands, etc.
My favourite scrubbing tool is a long-handled wooden brush with natural bristles and a replaceable and fully compostable head. For hard to clean items, like juicers, coffee makers, reusable water bottles, etc, steel and natural bristle bottle cleaners and even old toothbrushes work really well.
It is really easy and economical to make your own kitchen cleaners. Next time you empty a spray bottle, refill it with a homemade cleaner. White vinegar, water, and essential oils (I like lemon or orange oil) makes a great all-purpose cleaner. Baking soda and half a lemon is the absolute best for cleaning the sink! If you don’t want to make your own, you could buy one bottle of cleaner concentrate, which you dilute with water to refill a bottle many times over. (Down East is a fantastic Nova Scotia company to check out).
These small changes to your cleaning routine go a long way to reduce plastic as well as toxins in your kitchen.
More Tips for a Zero Waste Kitchen
Food waste and packaging are huge sources of kitchen waste to tackle. I covered these topics in these posts: Zero Waste 101: Five Steps to Shrinking your Trash Bag and 10 Habits for Zero Waste Food Shopping. If you’d like us to dive deeper into these topics, with more specific tips, please let us know!
I joined Simple Local Life as a contributor in February of last year (you can read my first post here), and it has been so encouraging to see the topic of zero waste gain momentum here on the South Shore since then. Thank you to Jen for having me and to all of you who take the time to read these posts, comment, and share.
I read something this week that really resonated with me: “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” (Maria Granel). Our individual actions do make a difference, so keep it up!
Margaret Hoegg is a Simple Local Life Contributor. She is also a writer, entrepreneur, and sustainability advocate on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Margaret writes about local food, gardening, sustainability, and wellness at Living Locavore and can be found on Instagram @living.locavore.
FYI – forests are a renewable resource. Trees grow back, most often a managed cut block will be healthier than one not cut from at all.
Yes, Megan you are right that properly managed forests could be a renewable resource. Unfortunately, forestry practices overall are unsustainable since we are losing forests faster than we can regenerate them, which makes them a non-renewable resource. And deforestation brings with it many other devastating environmental consequences, such as habitat and species loss as well as climate change. 🙁
Thank you for your ideas on reducing waste. We all need to get started and it will be take repeated blogs to make the difference, but we need to continue until everyone gets it.
Ardith, Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I agree, we all need to share what we are learning! Would you like to share some changes you have made to reduce waste?
The one thing I still use paper towel for is oiling my cast iron and my wooden cutting boards – I tried using cloth, but when I put them in the wash the oil stained other laundry (and it would take me way too long – like, a month or more – to have enough oily cloths to justify putting them in their own load with nothing else). I’m not sure what a reasonable alternative is. Is there something obvious I’m just not thinking of?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Do you think newspaper would do the trick? Or leftover packing paper? Also, you can buy big rolls of recycled unbleached paper towel at Office Supply stores – I bet one roll would last you forever if you only needed it for the odd task.
Re: plastic wrap — would a beeswax wrap work in the following situation? I often make homemade ice cream, which involves heating a milk / cream mixture to boiling on the stove and then refrigerating overnight. I need to be able to put something directly on the surface of the hot mixture to keep it from forming a skin. Would beeswax work or would it be likely to melt? This is pretty much the only thing I still use plastic wrap for — would be great to have an alternative! Thanks.
A beeswax wrap would not be best for this situation because any heat would melt the beeswax and it wouldn’t last as long and might be messy. I would try a silicone lid! They should be available at cook’s shops. Do you think that would work?
My wife is a chef and uses cling wrap to prevent a film from developing on thick sauces like custard or pastry cream… have you tried the beeswax on that? Its pretty much the only thing we use plastic wrap for… we’ve had the same roll of cling film for like 5 years. 😂
I love this – thanks for taking me up on the challenge. I’m wondering if a silicone pan lid would work for this? You could try it and maybe never have to buy another roll of plastic wrap? Maybe Cilantro Cooks Shop would carry something like this.