15 products to reduce plastic AND food waste in your kitchen
This entry was posted in News, Shop News on 26th January 2021 by Marci Cornett
There are so many (unfortunate) opportunities to create waste in your home’s kitchen from food that goes off before it’s eaten to all the single-use plastic products touted as storage “solutions”.
Let’s talk real solutions. The kind of solutions that keep food waste and plastic waste out of landfills and our precious oceans.
Below you’ll find the 15 products that will help you eliminate waste in your kitchen and reduce the size of your family’s environmental footprint.
But before we get to that...
Something’s gotta change
According to stopfoodwaste.ie, Ireland generates at least 1 million tonnes of food waste every year. But just by being savvier with food storage, by composting more, and by recycling more, we could eliminate at least 50% of the total amount of rubbish we send to landfills.
Here are our top 15 picks to help get you started...
Parchment paper is so handy for mess-free baking and packing foods for travel, but the conventional kind is bleached with chlorine that ends up making its way into streams, rivers, and lakes.
This parchment paper is completely chlorine-free and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). It’s also something you can throw into your compost bin instead of your rubbish bin.
Good to know:
You can heat pizza directly on a sheet of this parchment in your oven (no pan required!) or cut small squares of parchment into strips to separate slices of bread and make it freezer-ready.
In 2014, people in Ireland drank about 2kg of tea per person, earning us the second place title of the world’s biggest tea drinkers (we were beaten only by Turkey where people drank about 3kg of tea per person).
Tea is a part of our daily life that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But tea bags might be.
It’s now easier than ever to find tea bags made of plastic-free compostable materials, but a delicious zero-waste cup of tea doesn’t require a tea bag at all when you have this easy to use tea infuser with tongs.
The company that makes these rubber gloves were the first to apply fair trade to rubber products and to introduce FSC certification in rubber production.
Until that point, if you wanted rubber gloves, you could bet they were made from rubber produced in plantations where the living and working conditions were lamentable and the workers were paid very little money.
But with these rubber gloves, your conscience will be just as clean as all the household projects you tackle with them.
It turns out the ubiquitous green and yellow sponge we’re all familiar with (and its multi-coloured brethren) is not doing the earth any favours!
Those conventional sponges are made of synthetic plastic fibres that shed microfibres into waterways where they can take centuries to decompose.
But you don’t have to give up on kitchen sponges altogether. These sponges from Sonett are made primarily of regenerative, biodegradable cotton and sisal fibres, and they’re made to tackle a bunch of tough jobs over a really long time
Have you ever used half of a lemon or an onion and wished you had an easy (plastic-free) way to preserve the other half?
Or have you found the perfect small container for your leftover salad dressing...only to realise you have no lid to go with it?
Sounds like you could do with a pack of Food Huggers.
No, they’re not the foodie version of ‘tree huggers’; they’re silicone savers of different sizes perfect for covering fruit and veg that’s been cut in half as well as glasses, bottles, tins, jars, small bowls…
With a few of these Food Huggers hanging around, you may find that single-use cling film and tin foil have no business being in your kitchen.
Suitable for cold storage, freezing and storage at room temperature
100% compostable
Sometimes there’s no getting around it...you have a storage situation that calls for a plastic bag.
Maybe you want to send some homemade biscuits to a friend, or you want to send your kids outdoors with a few snacks to keep them going, and your usual eco-friendly storage containers would be too bulky (or too valuable) for the job.
With a pack of these food bags, you can feel much better about your single-use choice.
These bags are made of second-generation materials: plant residues that would otherwise be treated as waste and either burned or disposed of. Uniquely, the bags have an expiration date—just goes to show they won’t be hanging out in Mother Earth for the next hundred-odd years like most plastic bags.
And when you’re finished with these bags? Just pitch them in your home compost with all your other food scraps.
7. Stasher Plastic-Free Resusable Storage and Cook Bag
Plastic-free
BPA-free
Dishwasher-safe
Reuseable
How genius is this? A reusable plastic-free food storage bag that can go straight into the fridge, freezer, or even—wait for it—the microwave or oven!
It’s also safe to put in the dishwasher, so cleanup couldn’t get any easier.
We love the idea of batch cooking a recipe (like a vegan lentil bolognese, or a red lentil dhal) then freezing in portions of 1-2 servings. Just move the bag from the freezer to the fridge the night before, then reheat in the oven or microwave for easy dinner prep all week long.
The silicone material is BPA-free and made to be leak-free and extra durable, so you’ll be using this bag for a long time to come.
We’d suggest getting a few of these...a few for the kitchen, and a few to use for on-the-go storage for toiletries, crayons, or whatever else needs organising.
Just like the parchment paper from the same company, these baking cups are made with non-toxic, earth-friendly materials, so there’s no chlorine runoff into lakes, rivers, or streams.
The greaseproof, easy-release paper is perfect for sweet and savoury baked goods including muffins, cupcakes, mini cheesecakes, molten chocolate cakes, and mini quiches.
But their uses don’t end with baking…
A clever idea for these baking cups is to use them in your muffin tray to freeze individual portions of sauces or even puréed fruit for smoothies. Once frozen, lift the cups out of the tray and store them in a freezer-friendly bag, such as this one.
If you ask us, every sink should be equipped with at least one of these super absorbent cloths. There’s just nothing that works as quickly and efficiently for wiping up the water that always manages to form a pool on countertops.
And since the cloths are machine-washable and reusable, don’t hesitate to use them to wipe up more serious spills like drinks, sauces, or broken eggs.
In fact, it’s a good idea to have a few of these cloths dedicated solely to wiping up floor messes...you may find you no longer need single-use kitchen roll in your home.
The brush is made out of coir coconut fibre around a rust-free metal core, and it has a loop for hanging between uses. It’s hard-working and designed to last for months at a time.
At this point, we don’t know what’d we do without our beeswax wraps—how do you even function in a low-waste kitchen without them?
These wraps are the eco-friendly alternative to cling film. They’re perfect for wrapping sandwiches, baked goods, and cheese. You can even use them to cover jars and bowls, just let the warmth of your hands seal them to the container.
Speaking of cheese...did you know that cheese stored in cling film can actually absorb chemicals from the plastic?!
Just in case you didn’t have enough reasons to hate cling film, we’ll give you 1 more…scientists are finding that the PVC and PVDC in plastic wrap are particularly good at picking up metals and bacteria, further harming the fish who mistake the contaminated plastic for food.
Pretty horrible, right?
But with a few of these beeswax wraps and a selection of Food Huggers in your kitchen, you may never need to buy another roll of cling film again.
What to do about all those food stains from cooking...and let’s be honest, from eating as well?
This powerhouse soap from our favourite eco-cleaning company, Sonett, is brilliant for treating spots and removing stains.
Use it to remove stains from fruit, blood, grass, ink, or grease on your white or colour-fast clothing.
To use, simply wet the bar, rub onto dry fabric, allow to sit and soak for 15 minutes, then rinse clean or throw the garment directly into your washing machine. It couldn’t get any easier to remove hardheaded stains.
These bags make collecting food waste and keeping a home compost bin so much easier.
The bag itself is breathable, so it allows moisture to evaporate from food waste which significantly reduces unpleasant smells and mess. The bag’s material is strong and sturdy, because no one likes food scraps scattered across the floor thanks to a ripped bag.
Fill it up with food scraps, lift and tie the handles together, then chuck each bag straight into your brown/organic bin or home composter.
Thankfully, single-use plastic straws are becoming endangered in Ireland as more and more places switch to paper straws. Because the last thing we need to be doing is adding to the 8.3 billion plastic straws that pollute the world’s beaches.
In this set you’ll get four bent straws, a cleaning brush, and a cloth bag to store them. You’ll never have to use (or dispose of) a plastic or paper straw again.
These straws are essential kit for your own eco-conscious home, and they also make a great gift for a friend.
We wanted to keep this list small and easy-to-manage, but when you’re ready, you can find many more products in the Zero Waste category of our online shop.
Want even more low-waste inspiration? Have a look at these blog posts:
It’s never been easier to make decisions that are good for the health of your home and the environment. We’re so happy to be on this journey of change and progress with you.
This entry was posted in News, Shop News on 26th January 2021 by Marci Cornett
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