Sustainable Food Storage and Eco-Friendly Eating Habits: 5 Easy Tips
I’ll admit that I wasn’t always eco-friendly in my eating habits. I’d get lazy and frequent a fast food chain or buy a microwave meal at the grocery store. Not only was I contributing to landfill waste with all of the paper and plastic products, I was eating terribly!
Now I’ve realized that with a little bit of planning, and some cooking lessons, adopting eco-friendly eating habits can really be simple! I’ve taken some time to research ways to be more eco-friendly when it comes to food in the hopes of inspiring others to do the same.
- Eat local: Whether you’re buying a bottle of wine or a steak, look for locally sourced products to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Locally produced products are also often organic, which means little to no pesticides were used in their production.
- Compost: Food waste is unfortunate, but also inevitable. Composting gives your waste a second life and can really enhance your home garden or potted plants! People often shy away from composting because it seems like a lot of work or they are unsure what you can or cannot compost. Here is a list of things you can compost — some of them may surprise you!
- Glass storage: Glass containers offer a sustainable food storage solution. Although disposable plastic food storage containers are enticing due to their prices, plastic food storage containers produce harmful emissions during their production and few can be recycled at the end of their life cycles. After the initial investment, glass storage containers are actually cheaper than plastic containers because they last longer and won’t deteriorate over time.
- Protect your produce: If you’re like me, you try and do your grocery shopping on the weekends to prepare for the week (at least in theory). More often than not, I’ll buy vegetables or fruits that I won’t get around to eating or cooking until the end of the week. To keep your produce as fresh as possible, try specially designed fresh produce bags. These re-closeable and recyclable sustainable food storage bags have saved me a ton of grocery money by preventing unnecessary food waste.
- Repurpose food containers: Many foods come in great containers that can be reused for other food storage, decorations, or art projects! If you have an empty bottle of wine, wash it out and use it as a tasteful flower vase. Bottles with decorative labels make especially nice vases. If you are a jam or jelly lover, save the empty mason jars and use them to transport salad dressing or as drinking glasses if they’re large enough.
