TRASH AUDIT.

Photo by Gregg Segal

When transitioning to a zero-waste kitchen, I highly suggest you start by completing a trash audit. It's not gross. It's essential to know what you're throwing away so you can be intention about how you can reduce your waste stream.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Being confronted by the amount of things that you've tossed into the trash is eye-opening, but there's not need for self-criticism. Stay positive and focus on the progress you are making. By taking this class, you've shown your dedication to make a change and chances are you've probably already made lots of baby-steps in reducing your waste already.

Sort One Week of Trash.

Grab some rubber gloves, a couple of big trash bags and sort one full week of your garage into "like' piles like: food waste, non-recyclable items like chip bags, contact lenses, recyclable items. You might also weigh the amount of garbage your family created, or take a picture. This gives you a reference point for where you were later.

REDUCE YOUR FOOD WASTE.

MOST AMERICAN FAMILIES THREW AWAY $1,500 LAST YEAR.

Food waste for most American families is the equivalent of buying 5 bags of groceries, driving home, and directly dumping two bags into the garbage. The slightly better version -- dumping it in an organics bin.

All that food waste ends up costing a family of four, around a $120 dollars a month in wasted groceries. 

According to the Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), author of of the ultimate guide to reducing food waste in your home,  The Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook, and all-around rock-star

‘Getting food from the farm to our fork eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of all freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten.” (NRCD, 2012)

While a lot of food waste issues in the US need to be addressed by more systematic policy measures, such as consistency in food labels.

Individual consumers make up the biggest piece of the food waste pie. Luckily, that means there are lots of small steps we can take that will reduce food waste, and help us save some serious cash.  

GAIN AWARENESS.

Awareness is typically the first step in making any lasting change. If you take a moment to be more mindful about your behavior with food, how much you cook, how much you eat, and how much you end up throwing away you will inevitably start to make some significant changes. And if everyone did just a 1% better, that would end up being some truly incredible numbers. 

'The average American consumer wasting 10 times as much as food as the average consumer in Southeast Asia.'

Quick Note: Did you know that “best by,” “use by,” and “sell by” labels are not regulated in the USA (except on baby formula). That means if you’ve been throwing food products based on those dates, you might be throwing away perfectly good food — and your money. Currently, policy makers are suggesting a more uniformed approach in labeling food, instead of only being suggestions from manufactures (who’s goal is to sell you more food) on when food is safe to eat and when it’s not.

REDUCE YOUR INTAKE.

When you reduce the amount of waste you bring into your kitchen, you reduce the amount you need to dispose of. As you go through your audit take note of items that you use on a weekly basis. Weekly purchases of almond milk and hummus could be swapped for a bulk-purchased, home-made option, reducing the number of containers you need to dispose of. Single-use plastic bags could be eliminated. You could switch out single-use Keurig pods for reusable ones.

RECYCLING.

Recycling is a great place to start reducing your waste, but it's no silver bullet. Recycling only works if there's a market for the materials -- and lot's of communities don't have the infrastructure to accommodate. Markets for glass, paper, an aluminum are usually still viable, but often just barely. China was once a major buyer of our bulk, unsorted, recyclable goods (people would hand-sort our stuff once it arrived), now they've stopped accepting everything, creating a huge crunch in the market. That's why reducing our waste is so important. If we never create it to begin with, we don't have to try and create a market for it too.

Wishful recycling is also a big issue. This is where people want something to be recyclable, but it's actually not. (Think frozen ice-cream containers or pop tabs not attached to pop-cans. By recycling items that actually can't be recycled, you create more work for the people sortin and less profit for the company, which makes it a less viable industry. Make and effort to learn what can and cannot be recycled, and pass that information on to anyone you live with.

COMPOSTING.

Unfortunately, food waste makes for an incredible amount of our garbage. The best way to reduce food waste is to not create it in the first place. Currently, the average American family of four throws away $1,500 each year in groceries. Dana Gunders has written an excellent book on how to reduce food waste, entitled, The Waste Free Kitchen Handbook.

If you're lucky enough to live in an area where city-wide composting is available, sign up for it. Because large scale industrial composting gets much hotter than home based composting you can include things like meat, q-tips, egg-cartons, and soiled pizza boxes.

If you don't have city-wide composting, you can still compost! It will take a bit more research, but it's definitely worth it. Especially, if you garden as compost or worm juice from worm bins makes for excellent soil amendments.

FIND A TERRACYCLE LOCATION.

Looking to recycle something that you think can't be recycled? TerraCycle is your dream come true!

'TerraCycle® is a social enterprise Eliminating the Idea of Waste®. In 20 countries, we tackle the issue from many angles. We have found that nearly everything we touch can be recycled and collect typically non-recyclable items through national, first-of-their-kind recycling platforms."

You can find drop-off locations and more at www.terracycle.com.

HOMEWORK.

Place containers for curb-side recycling, drop-off recycling, compost, and trash in your kitchen.

Clearly label them and reference what can be placed in those containers.

Make sure you purchase BPI, bio-degradable bags for your compost bins. Don't use these bags for your trash, they take more energy to make than plastic bags do, so it's actually better to throw your trash away in plastic bags.