- Go vegetarian twice a week. Eating one or two vegetarian meals a week is a good choice for the environment, as farming animals produces surprisingly large amounts of air and waste pollution, and causes 80 percent of the world’s annual deforestation. It also requires large amount of water, and livestock worldwide consumes half the world’s total grain harvest. This is why choosing organic meat and dairy products raised on sustainable farms help the environment.
- Compost your food waste. One quarter of the average binful is made of organic waste, which means that all vegetables and fruit trimmings can be composted on a garden compost heap, and the rest via your local council or recycling agency: that’s leftovers, food that’s gone off, trimmings and food you don’t want. It can include bones, dry foods and cooked foods.
- Don’t throw your cooking oil down the sink. Whenever small particles or grease are washed down the drain, they solidify and attach to the inside of the pipes. As more and more particles of grease flow down the drain, they gradually accumulate and can form a large mass. This mass eventually clogs the pipes, blocks the wastewater flow and often results in an expensive backup or a public sewer spill. To be eco-friendly, carefully pour used oil into a strong sealable container, such as an old plastic jar with a lid and dispose of it in the trash can.
- Say no to packaging for fruit and vegetables. Instead of throwing out food packaging every time you do shopping, buy unpackaged fruit and vegetables by going to the vegetable counter or grocers and choosing to clean them up by yourself.
- Rethink how you buy milk. If you buy milk from the supermarket, it’s very likely that it will be in a Tetra-Pak carton or a plastic milk bottle. The Tetra-Pak cartons, because they are made of different materials fused together, are very hard to recycle, and plastic bottle require lots of energy to be recycled. An alternative is to buy your milk in returnable, reusable glass milk bottles from a milkman or local dairy – check in your local area to see what’s on offer.
- Recycle your booze. Be green about your boozing and opt for organic and local wines over imported bottles (food miles apply to drinks as well) and while you are at it, recycle all your cans and bottles!
- Think twice about ready meals. Ready meals are basically food that ends up being cooked twice, which is a waste of energy. Then think of all the packaging and the cheap ingredients used (meaning they are more likely to come from intensive farms) and you’ll see that it’s more eco-friendly (and healthier and cheaper) to cook from scratch.
- Cut back on meat when you’re eating out. The Eat Less Meat campaign is calling for a 15 percent reduction in meat consumption over the next 10 to 15 years. Farms are a major source of pollution and tropical forests are cut down to raise beef.
- Say no to foil. Instead of regular aluminum foil, buy recycled foil to wrap food in. Recycled foil uses a twentieth of the energy needed to produced a regular foil.
- Say no to all packaging
- Most food-packaging material uses some petroleum-based plastic. Look for minimally or unpackaged items instead, for purchased brands that use bio-based instead of petroleum-based plastic. Bread, rice, pasta and grains can all be bought at pick-and-mix places and stored into reused bags.
- Bring a cloth bag to the shops instead of using plastic bags. An estimate 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. That’s 1 million bahs used per minute and less than 1 percent of those are actually recycled.
- Buy your water in bio bottles. Bio bottles are made from corn but could also be made from potatoes, rice or beetroot. The corns goes through a fermentation and distillation process and is reduced to an acid, which is then moulded into bottles – which means that after use they can be composted.
- Cook at home more often. Reduce global warming and improve air quality by staying home to eat and lowering your car emissions (if you have to drive out and eat)!
- Buy dolphin-friendly tuna. Tuna has been linked with the killing of dolphins, as they swim alongside tuna and then get caught in the nets. Although new measures have been bought in, around 1,000,000 dolphins are still killed every year.
- Avoid single portions. Even if you live alone, you don’t need to buy single portions of convenience food; they are ecologically unsound as they use up excess packaging.
- Don’t waste food. It sounds obvious but don’t waste the food you buy. Use it, cook it, freeze it.
- Buy eco-food. As in, buy food that have less of an impact on the environment, such as rice, fruits and vegetables, compared to meat and dairy.
- Shop by foot not by car. If you can reduce the number of times you go shopping by car, by either walking or getting public transport, you’ll help reduce the effects of global warming and air pollution.
Compiled by Janet Lee. Source: The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Green Living by Anita Naik
