Reducing waste in your home, reusing, and recycling are great ways to live more naturally. It lets you be kinder to the environment, reduce your carbon footprint, and make use of as many materials as possible. Therefore, knowing how to reduce waste at home is something that you shouldn’t ignore.
Here are the easy steps you can follow.
How to Reduce Waste at Home in Four Steps
Start Meal Planning and Cooking at Home
A simple way to start reducing waste in your home is to do meal planning and cook more meals at home.
This can result in reducing wasted food and packaging from processed foods as well as frozen food containers.
Think about how many food containers you end up throwing away and not recycling just from eating out. Fast food restaurants wrap every single food item, plus most leftover containers are not recyclable.
When you use a lot of processed ingredients, all that plastic and glass is just using precious resources that end up getting thrown away.
The more you cook from home with fresh, whole ingredients, the less waste you are going to use.
Reuse Your Containers to Reduce Waste at Home
There are likely many containers you purchase that hold different foods and ingredients, that you currently just throw out.
But before you put anything in the trash, consider if it can be reused for something else.
For example, those plastic butter or margarine containers are a good size for smaller amounts of leftovers. You can reuse glass jars as jars to hold salads or other meal prepping ingredients. Oftentimes, deli meats come in a plastic container that works great for bringing your lunch to work.
Learn How to Compost
You can also try composting to reduce the waste stream.
Compost is the practice of taking much of what you would have thrown away, and instead, returning it to the earth. All you really need is a good-sized compost bin where you will throw items like eggshells, banana peels, potato peels, coffee grounds, avocado skin, and vegetable scraps.
You can also compost other items, like grass clippings, printer paper, newspaper, and yard waste. Compost is great to add to your garden as a natural fertilizer.
Reduce Waste in the Kitchen
A lot of the waste you go through in your home happens in the kitchen. Think of some more ways you can reduce waste in this area of your home.
After all, it takes individual efforts to reduce the volume of the waste stream. So whatever contribution you make, no matter how small, is definitely beneficial.
Use microfiber cloths instead of paper towels.
Stop buying single-use paper towels! These are such a waste and can’t be recycled. Microfiber cloths work just as well, if not better, to soak up liquids, clean, dry your hands, and so much more.
Get reusable baggies for lunches and snacks.
Those plastic storage bags are not necessary when you can get reusable ones that are easy to rinse and keep using over and over again.
Takeaway
If you’re wondering how to reduce waste at home, try doing these four simple but impactful things.
We all hope for a cleaner environment not only for us but also for future generations. So in order for us to enjoy the benefits of reducing food waste, each one of us must be willing to do our part.