Five Kitchen Habits to Break in 2019

Whether you’ve set a sustainable food resolution or are just looking to make your life a little greener, there are loads of ways to be more sustainable in the kitchen. In this post, I’ll walk you through some unsustainable food and kitchen habits to break in 2019 and beyond.

Disposing of useful scraps

A ton of food scraps can be put to good use, and I'm not just talking about in the composter: I'm talking about in actual food. You can put your vegetable scraps in the freezer to make a broth, use carrot tops to make a pesto, include the broccoli stems in your favorite broccoli slaw, fry an egg in bacon fat, or so many other delicious things.

Cooking with scraps not only cuts down on food waste, but it can also save money. It might take a bit of research and trial and error to figure out which scraps work well for you and which don't, but this is very much worth it.

Letting food go bad

This is a huge one. Over-buying on food and letting it go to waste is a hard habit to break, especially if you have a super busy lifestyle or a lot of mouths to account for.

My number one tip to keep food from going bad is to keep your cabinets organized. If you can easily keep track of the foods you have, it will be easier to plan which foods you need to use ASAP and which foods can keep chilling in the cabinet.

Another option is meal planning and meal prepping. I know this seems like a super bougie thing reserved for Instagram fitness models, but you can do it too! Even if you just create a meal plan in your head or cut up some veg on Sunday nights, a little bit of planning could really help you use your food before it goes bad.

Using inefficient or unnecessary appliances

Investing in energy efficient appliances makes a real difference in the amount of electricity (and money, hello) used in your kitchen. Saving energy means that your home will use less fuel and thus releases fewer GHGs. Don't go out and buy new appliances if your old ones are still kicking, but do invest in energy efficiency if you get the chance.

Outside of buying energy efficient appliances, you can also make simple swaps in the ways you use appliances. For example, boiling water in an electric kettle is much more energy efficient than boiling it on the stove, and reheating leftovers in the microwave is more energy efficient than firing up the oven to reheat them. These are just two of the many easy peasy changes you can make to save energy in the kitchen. As a general rule, small appliances will use less energy than large ones, so go small whenever possible.

Buying heavily packaged foods

So many foods at the grocery store are wrapped in 200 layers of plastic and it just breaks my heart. Plastic has basically taken over the world, which is terrible for the environment, so the less plastic you can use the better.

A lot of food packaging is totally avoidable if you buy in bulk (hello bulk bins with reusable bags) or just buy different products that are packaged less or packaged in more reusable or recyclable containers. Sorry, but you don't need to buy individually wrapped coffee creamers or bananas sitting on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic. That's just plain wasteful.

Buying unsustainable standbys

Whether it's buying strawberries when they are wayyyy out of season, refusing to give up your favorite unsustainable big-name coffee beans or feeding your love of red meat whenever you get the chance, everyone has those nasty unsustainable food habits that they just need to shake.

Reevaluate your food choices to reduce GHGs, cut back on waste, eat less dairy and meat, or improve on other unsustainable habits that have slipped through the cracks. If you're overwhelmed by the number of unsustainable habits you've acquired, try to cut back on just one or two bad habits at a time. Even the smallest changes can make a world of difference.