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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Choosing a Stove For a Green Kitchen – Energy Star is Just a Start
By Deb Powers

Have you made a commitment to live greener? Many people are working toward becoming greener in their everyday lives in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut back on their carbon footprints and save money. As part of that effort, green enthusiasts have turned their attention to their kitchen habits. While there are many small steps that people can take to go green in the kitchen, one big step is replacing that old kitchen stove with a more energy efficient model – one that suits the way you cook and reduces the amount of energy that you use to put food on the table.

When it comes to choosing greener appliances, most homeowners rely on the Energy Star rating. Energy Star is a government certification program that labels appliances that are energy efficient. It’s so successful that it’s become an international standard. Choosing a stove that has an Energy Star is the most obvious choice when buying a new stove, but it doesn’t really do much to narrow your choices down. There are other choices you can make that will affect how much energy you use and how much carbon you save.

Electric or Natural Gas

The first question most cooks ask themselves when choosing a new stove is “electric or gas”? There are points in favor of each choice. Gas is obviously a fossil fuel, which is a limited resource, but until we switch over to renewable energy sources to generate electricity, most electrical power is generated in coal-burning power plants. As long as that’s the case, a gas stove and an electric stove are pretty similar in terms of carbon footprint.

Advantages of Gas Stoves

Gas stoves offer many advantages for cooks. They include:

• Easier and more accurate temperature control
• Instant-on heat
• Instant adjustments in temperature when you lower or raise heat
• No heat waste when cooking is done

Advantages of Electric Stoves

Electric stoves also offer many advantages for cooks and in energy efficiency.

• Burner elements sized for cooking utensils
• Easy to clean, especially glass cooktops
• Electric stoves offer additional cooking modes – convection, fan, microwave, etc

Of course, there are drawbacks to both electric and gas stoves as well. Electric stoves with glass cooktops and induction elements, for instance, require the use of real metal cookware – glass pots and aluminum pots won’t work right because the heat from the induction element won’t transfer properly. In addition, the cookware used on a glass cooktop must be perfectly flat or much of the energy used for heat will go to waste.

Energy Efficiency Tips for Choosing a Kitchen Stove

• When choosing an electric stove, choose the stove with the most efficient heating elements possible. Cooktops with induction elements are the most energy efficient, followed by halogen elements and finally electric coil elements.
• Gas stoves with electronic ignition use 40% less gas than those with a pilot light. – Choose a model that you’ll be happy with for at least a decade. The longer you use your new stove, the longer it will stay out of the landfills.
• An electric stove with an oven that has convection and microwave options gives you more flexibility in energy use.
• Read the Energy Guide label to compare one stove with another when making a choice for a green kitchen stove.

Remember, though, that the most efficient stove in the world is only as efficient as your cooking habits. Look for green cooking tips to help you make the most of your new energy efficient stove.

Deb Powers is a freelance writer and researcher who writes frequently about renewable energy and green living. 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.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deb_Powers
http://EzineArticles.com/?Choosing-a-Stove-For-a-Green-Kitchen—Energy-Star-is-Just-a-Start&id=2651687