Welcome to Reduce Your Kitchen Carbon Footprint, my new monthly series aimed at empowering you and your family to play a role in combatting global climate change. I strongly believe that every little action and every small change in the way we purchase food, cook it, and consume it can impact the future health of the planet … in a good way. We have the power to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through small, sustainable changes, and we can do that right from our own home kitchens.
This month, I invite each and every one of you to reduce food waste by composting your food scraps and organic kitchen waste. Let’s celebrate this challenge together by turning the daily action of composting into a new habit we can stick with all year long and beyond. Learning to be more mindful of your impact on the planet and changing your food behaviors to be more “green,” is like learning to eat a healthier diet. You may not accomplish all of your goals overnight, but over time, those small changes add up. You and your kids can do this!
Starting today, I challenge you to compost your everyday organic waste. Instead of tossing your carrot peels, coffee grounds, strawberry stems, wooden popsicle sticks, paper towels, and wine corks into the trash, how about composting them instead? You can compost at home or use a curbside pick-up service to haul it off each week. In other words, let someone else do the composting for you!
{Call your local Department of Public Works and ask how composting is done in your community.}
Look how much food waste I generated when I made my Easy Red Lentil & Vegetable Soup. Now, instead of heading to the trash, it’s on its way to the compost pile.
On the first Monday of every month, I’ll be announcing a new action aimed at reducing your kitchen carbon footprint. The challenges I toss your way will be so simple that after a few weeks, they’ll become new habits.
Admittedly, I attempted composting about 10 years ago, but I failed miserably. I purchased an outdoor composing bin, but the food scraps I tossed into the bin (eggshells, coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable peels, paper towel rolls, etc) sat there and never decomposed. Here I was trying to be the perfect mom and role model, but after a few months, I became annoyed and frustrated. The only critters doing the happy dance were the mice who took up residence in the bin.
Thankfully, I recently signed up for a local pick-up service called, Black Earth Compost. It costs $99.00 a year, and each week, they collect my kitchen waste. Rescuing all those food scraps feels so good!
While making beef and veggie stew the other day, I generated a lot of food scraps. Look at all those carrot peels.
When your organic kitchen waste ends up buried in a landfill, it doesn’t decompose in a good way. In the absence of oxygen, anaerobic bacteria break it down and produce methane, a greenhouse gas with global warming potential. The aerobic process of composting doesn’t produce methane, and what you end up with is compost that can be used to enrich and nourish your soil.
Imagine if everyone on Planet Earth did that!
The town of Lexington, MA where I live does not offer a composting service. But after I subscribed to Black Earth Compost, our DPW provided this 13-gallon bin for free.
Here’s how my curbside pick-up service works:
- After signing up for Black Earth Compost, I received a free 13-gallon bin from my town’s DPW. I purchased compostable bin liners from Black Earth along with smaller, compostable collection bags which I keep on hand in my kitchen.
- Every time I cook (which is often!), I collect the food scraps in one of those smaller compostable bags. Once full, I toss the bags into my 13-gallon bin, or, if I’m planning to be out of town on pick-up day, I pop them into the freezer.
- Every Thursday, Black Earth Compost swings by to pick up all the bits and bobs from the 13-gallon bin.
- In the spring, Black Earth will deliver a bag of finished compost to every subscriber. For people like me who don’t have a green thumb, I can opt to donate the compost to an organization called, Backyard Growers.
I’m blown away by the amount of food I was mindlessly throwing away. Collecting food scraps and other kitchen waste is easy and fun, and I’m happy to be part of the climate change solution versus feeling like I’m always part of the problem.
I was out traveling last week for a nutrition conference and was away on pick-up day. Instead of leaving my compost in the bin all week, I simply froze it. When I returned, I took the bags out of the freezer and put them into the bin. Easy!
When I look up and down my street on Thursday and see those green Black Earth bins at the end of every other driveway, I’m confident that our collective action will reduce the trash in nearby landfills … and the greenhouse gases they produce.
Turn Spoils Into Soil!
I hope you enjoy the January challenge. If you have questions about composting, here are some helpful resources:
Composting to Avoid Methane Production
Next month’s challenge will feature a shopping bag makeover!
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