Environmentally-Friendly Hacks to Reduce Kitchen Waste

Story & Photos by Aitana Myrbo | Design by Itzel Montoya

Millions of Americans live in spaces with little to no backyard, from apartments to townhouses to dorms, but that should not prevent them from the joys of growing their favorite fruits and vegetables. Even with minimal space, people can still create beautiful gardens and compost unusable scraps. Seeds can be grown on windowsills, several veggies and herbs can be grown in cups of water on a shelf or countertop and a compost bin can easily be stored and maintained indoors with no smell or mess. Keep the Seeds

Many store-bought fruits and vegetables contain seeds that can be planted in the garden or put in a seed vault for future use. Plants such as avocados, lemons, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and more all contain seeds which have the potential to germinate and grow at home.

Storing seeds in a dark, dry location keeps most seeds good for a year or two, which means no more spring rush to buy seed packets. Hold onto the seeds from your favorite fruits and vegetables and you will always be ready for spring.

There are many benefits to growing your own food from seeds. Elizabeth Waddington, a writer for Rural Sprout, a group of writers dedicated to homesteading, writes that by growing food from store-bought vegetables “you should be able to easily grow more food, save money, and move towards a zero waste lifestyle.”

Eating fruits and vegetables from the garden instead of the store could help prevent food from going bad in the fridge, and ensure that what you are eating is free of pesticides and chemicals.

Waddington encourages never discarding seeds, since many seeds can be eaten as well as planted. Pumpkin and squash seeds can be roasted for a tasty treat. Some seeds can be sprouted in a windowsill and then eaten, such as beansprouts, broccoli sprouts and microgreens, making a tasty, healthy addition to many meals. Regrow Scraps

Regrowing scraps is actually very simple. Many vegetables can be regrown by placing the unused ends in water. This is an easy way to start a garden without needing seeds or dirt.

Many root vegetables and leafy greens can be regrown from scraps in the kitchen. Potatoes can be grown from just small scraps, as long as they have an eye or divot, by placing it directly into the soil. Other vegetables such as carrots and sweet potatoes can be started in water, but will need to be moved outdoors as they grow. Some plants, such as green onions and several types of herbs, can be regrown and harvested without ever touching dirt as long as the water is kept clean and liquid plant food is occasionally added.

“For those of us who live in an apartment or without a yard, we’re always envious of those who have their own gardening areas for planting and regrowing vegetables,” writes Daniel Huang, a blogger for spud.ca, a Canadian company that delivers fresh produce and helps households go green.

“It’s the accessibility, the cost saving, and the knowing that nothing toxic is going into your food.”

But even people in apartments can grow their own food. Growing herbs and vegetables in glasses of water on the countertop can provide a supply of produce all through winter. Compost

If you find yourself with food scraps that have no seeds and cannot be regrown, then the compost bin is where they belong.

There are small-scale compost bins for apartments and small homes, designed for anyone who wants to give composting a try. Composting has many benefits, and compost is often recommended over fertilizers since compost is a safe, eco-friendly alternative for feeding your plants.

An indoor worm bin or an outdoor worm tower are two easy ways to compost kitchen scraps that take up little space and will not attract rodents. A worm bin can be fashioned out of a tote and stored indoors all year round, producing a constant supply of healthy soil from infertile dirt and kitchen scraps. A worm tower is a great way to add nutrients directly into the ground by sticking an open-ended, four inch PVC pipe into your garden and filling it with kitchen scraps.

Composting is cheap to set up and maintain, and will allow you to grow healthier plants in your garden and increase your yield. Adding compost to plants puts the unused nutrients from food scraps back into the soil. Leaf and Limb, an organization whose vision is to overcome pressing environmental issues, writes that composting “prevents green waste from going to a landfill, which reduces your waste footprint and prevents the generation of harmful methane gas.” The decomposition process of food in compost bins does not produce methane gas, making a compost bin safe for indoor use. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s website specifies “methane-producing microbes are not active in the presence of oxygen.” Since scraps in the center of landfills and manure piles are cut off from oxygen, they release significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Small-scale composting does not have this problem.

Spud.ca urges households to buy only what they need and discard as few kitchen scraps as possible, but acknowledges that “composting is one of the easiest ways to reduce your personal environmental footprint.”

If you are still not sure composting is for you, check your area for eco-friendly food scrap recycling programs, or composting services.