Living a greener life is not only good for the planet’s health, it’s good for your health and the health of your family. Maintaining a bright green kitchen – in terms of energy efficiency and energy use, not color – can reduce your carbon footprint, but it can also help you feed your family a healthier, more delicious diet. The way that you shop, cook, serve and clean up after serving meals all contribute to creating not just a healthy kitchen but a bright green kitchen.

Shopping Tips for a Greener Kitchen

1. Buy local when you can. It means less fuel was used to transport your food, and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
2. Shop at farmers’ markets. You know you’re buying locally, and contributing to the local economy as well. Keeping local farmers in business is good for everyone.
3. Skip “serving size packs” of food and buy in bulk. It reduces the amount of trash going into the landfills.
4. Bring your own bags. Every plastic bag you don’t use is one less bag in the trash. For an added bonus, many stores will take 5-10 cents off your grocery bill for every bag you bring.
5. Look for the recycle symbol on products that you buy in plastic bottles to make sure you’re buying containers that can be recycled.

Green Cooking Tips

1. Raw foods use no energy at all in preparation. Serve fruits and vegetables au naturel as snacks and desserts.
2. Use the right size burner for your pots and pans. Don’t put a small pan on a large burner – it wastes up to 40% of the energy used to heat the burner.
3. Think small. Use the smallest cooking appliance possible when cooking. A full-size oven wastes a lot of energy heating empty space. Try a counter top oven or slow cooker to use less energy when cooking.
4. Skip the food processor and electric mixer for small jobs. Some of the best kitchen appliances use no energy at all – an old-fashioned egg beater, for instance, can whip cream or egg whites with just a little elbow grease.
5. Don’t preheat your oven. Most modern ovens heat quickly enough that preheating is redundant.

Serve It Green

1. If you must use disposable dishes and serving ware, use paper which can go into your compost, or look for post-consumer recycled materials.
2. Using fewer dishes means washing fewer dishes – less energy needed for cleanup. There’s no need to dump vegetables from the cooking pot into a serving dish.
3. Garnish food with edible fresh flowers and herbs from your own garden. Gardening is one way to reduce your carbon footprint by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
4. Serve food when it’s ready to avoid having to keep food warm.

Green Kitchen Cleanup Tips

1. If you only have a couple of plates and cups, wash them by hand instead of running the dishwasher.
2. When hand-washing, fill the sink instead of washing and rinsing under running water.
3. Compost fruit and vegetable peels and leftovers. Good for your garden, good for the planet.
4. It’s actually kinder to the environment to run the dishwasher for a full load of dishes than to wash them by hand.
5. Recycle as much as possible – glass, cans and cardboard are all recyclable. The more you recycle, the less goes into the landfills to clog up our earth.

Deb Powers is a freelance writer and researcher who writes frequently about renewable energy and global warming. She has been an environmental activist since the 1970s, and continues to work toward a greener planet by highlighting advances in alternative energy sources, promoting Fair Trade causes and participating in local environmental activism.

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