A Lil guide: your low waste, plastic-free kitchen awaits
Top tips for your Lower Impact Kitchen
I’m writing this in my far-from insta/pinterest worthy kitchen. But hey, it’s not about perfection, it’s about reducing impact. For all the dishes still to be put away, the dishwasher to empty and surfaces to clean, I realise our kitchen is well on the way to being plastic free.
It certainly wasn’t always thus! Here are some of the top tips and products that we love for the room where the best parties always end up.
For clarity, this post is about kitchen items. We talk about food plenty elsewhere: like our lovely pantry boxes or pantry section to help you cut your unnecessary single use plastic waste from your food cupboards; plus we love our Phantassie organic fruit and veg for lower impact fresh produce.
So, to the kitchen more generally …
1. Slim your bin
Kitchens tend to house the main household bin, whether this is “the bin” or the recycling, food-waste or compost and landfill bins. The best way to put your bin on a diet is to have a note or white board above the bin and ask everyone to note what goes in, or put a tally under general headings. This will help you track your waste-lines (geddit?), and see where you can most easily make the biggest difference.
For us, that main offender across all our bins was sparkling water in the recycling. We now have a sodastream* and it has halved our recycling. If you’re in a similar boat, keep that choose to reuse love rolling, and consider a second-hand machine. (Scroll to the end for more on sodastream.)
Our next big waste offenders were tissues and kitchen roll (or as we Aussies creatively call it, paper towel). We invested in tea-towels and hankies and discovered that we could be composting tissues & kitchen roll (note, but these are not for council food waste). We’ve also now found some better versions for tissues and kitchen roll.
We’ve also sourced some super compostable bin bags. (Home compostable too, remember to check it’s not ‘industrially compostable’. And marketing tricksters can use ‘biodegradable’ far too loosely, possibly over 600 years.)
2. Cut the Cling
Globally, we have already produced enough plastic to cling film the entire earth. By 2040, we could be swimming in enough plastic to wrap the world SIX times around, unless we reduce our plastic habit and recycle more. Of course that’s all plastic use, not just cling film. But it was a great visual to stop me buying the next roll – and we have survived without it.
For a long time, I emptied leftovers into containers, I put a plate over a bowl in the fridge, I washed out plastic bags. This year, after selling so many to everyone else, I bought beeswax wraps. And they are pretty and awesome. They have saved me time in rummaging for the right lids for containers, and the patterned wraps inspire the kids to uncover what’s for snack. For heading out and about, I seriously love the reusable and compostable sandwich bags.
In my kitchen right now I can also see 100% recycled aluminium foil, covering tonight’s dessert. (Better go put that away!)
3. Coffee and tea, pod and plastic free
If you have them, a stove top espresso gives a great morning kick, a cafetiere is super to share, or if you already have a coffee pod machine, then there is good news there too.
However, please - puh-leeese - let this be your last bag of aluminium coffee pods.
There are now several options for compostable pods, or you can buy a refillable pod too.
Of the 13,500 capsules consumed every minute, only 21% are recycled – HALO coffee.
Halo makes pods that compost at home or in landfill in four weeks. Put strawberry seeds in it and watch a plant grow.
Edinburgh company Artisan Roast make pods that can go in the council’s food waste bins. There are lots of options that don’t need to recycle.
The inventor of the American equivalent K-pod has expressed regret at the environmental costs of pods. Former Nespresso chief executive Jean-Paul Gaillard told the Australian ABC that the cost of convenience was a “disaster”. He speaks well on the subject:
"It will be a disaster and it's time to move on that. People shouldn't sacrifice the environment for convenience. I discovered that recycling doesn't really work. Except if you are very close to a smelting factory which is never the case. Aluminium capsules have to be shredded, the coffee has to be taken away with water, the varnish to be burnt and aluminium has to be re-smelted again. You need a lot of transportation and energy."
He now sells his own company’s biodegradable coffee pods that broke down within eight months at the time of his ABC interview.
"This is the future. The planet is not ours. It will be for our kids.
“The good news is the power is entirely with consumers to buy the right goods, because what we buy more of, those things will be on the shelf.
"Consumers need to take action in consuming the right goods, and voicing where they don't like what they see, and that's how we're going to wake up in a world where the concept of garbage doesn't exist."
More on Nespresso?
Tea is also on the low impact kitchen radar. Generic tea bags use a plastic seal, so select super carefully - I love Clipper bags but still need to find ways to recycle the foil they come wrapped in. Or, you can get a tea basket or a reusable tea bag that you can fill with your choice of loose tea. (Remember to check how this comes inside the box.)
4. Sparking the joy in dishes
Ecoleaf dishwasher tabs, how I love thee. Simple, safe, effective.
I no longer remember what it was like to wash with “harmful to aquatic life” products, but I do remember Sarah’s top tip to use leftover lemon slices from gin or pancakes as a glass rinse boost. Just pop them on the top shelf. Michael Rosen plays a game to see how many dishes you can put away without taking a breath. Not low impact maybe, but fun.
I’ve also got a super range of dish-washing accessories for the sink.
The loofah scrub pad is best for pans, the dish brush for glasses, the cloths are super for anything you’d use a regular cloth for, and the wee brown brush nails the potatoes and other veggie dirt.
We’ve also got some super rubber gloves.
5. What’s cooking…
The way we prepare our food can also help reduce our impacts. Boil the kettle rather than using a gas hob; use the microwave more.
Be frugal: maximise the oven time by baking cakes and dinner concurrently. If you’re using the hob, make sure you use a lid on a pot to keep heat in. Only boil as much water as you need at any time.
And we’re not supposed to be talking about food, but what we eat does have an impact. Buy seasonal, buy local, buy quality. Plan meals with real food ingredients to cut processing, food miles and hidden ingredients. And especially to cut food waste.
If food waste were a country with its own carbon footprint, it would rank #3 globally, behind China and the US.
6. Appliances. I have nothing cute for appliances.
Look after your appliances. Your existing one is better than the new energy rated whatever. But when that fated day does come, buy carefully and for quality. We tend to find our happy blend between www.ethicalconsumer.org and review/ value for money websites. If you need a new cooker, induction hobs are the most efficient, and the technology has improved such that they are getting rave reviews from foodies too.
Caring for your existing appliances doesn’t need to cost the earth either. Vinegar, bicarb soda and citric acid, can provide an industrial clean for just about anything. We can also get you refills for naturally better cleaning products such as mulitpurpose spray, glass cleaner and more.
*Sodastream… I’d love recommendations if anyone knows of a more ethical choice than sodastream? It was bought by Pepsico last year, and has been a focus for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. It did however support the Global Climate Strikes and has helped cut waste and carbon, was taken to court by the big bottled water boys over a Game of Thrones inspired “Shame or Glory” ad campaign.
More links I’ve liked in the writing of this blog…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/best-induction-hobs/