7 ways to green your kitchen

admin Posted: February 3rd, 2009

2. Stock Your Fridge: By stocking your fridge full of liquids like pitchers of water, juices, bottles of soda, etc, the inside of your fridge retains a more constant cool temperature. Your refrigerator will use less energy, making a smaller impact on the environment.

3. Glass instead of Plastic: Glass is infinitely recyclable. Plastic takes as much energy to recycle as it took to make it in the first place.

4. Storage Containers instead of Baggies: There are many benefits to using glass or ceramic storage containers instead of baggies. Containers are more eco friendly because they are reused many times. Glass containers can go into the microwave without emitting harmful chemicals into your food like plastic containers to. If you stack your fridge with many glass and ceramic containers, the containers will help regulate the inside temperature of your fridge along with your many bottles of water from tip #2.

5. Recycle Bins: Set up recycle bins for plastic bottles, cans, glass, and paper. With handy recycle bins, your family will reduce the amount of waste going into your local land fill.

6. Tin-foil not Plastic Wrap: Aluminum is infinitely recyclable at a lower energy consumption rate than mining the aluminum, unlike recycling plastic which uses the same amount of energy as creating the original plastic. So even if you recycled the plastic wrap, recycling the aluminum has less impact on the environment.

7. Grocery Bags: Plastic grocery bags are a menace. They take just as much energy to recycle into other plastic bags as it took to make the first bag, and they take hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill. So even using the recycled plastic grocery bags aren’t really saving the environment. You could donate your used plastic bags to second hand stores and hope that the lucky shoppers receiving your bag will keep the re-use cycle going. But the best solution is to bring canvas shopping bags to the store with you so you don’t have to get a plastic bag in the first place!