Three Changes in the Kitchen

Recycle

In the South, I think it’s fair to say that recycling isn’t the norm. My relatives in upstate New York have been recycling for as long as I can remember (and I’ve been visiting them regularly since the early ’90s). But down South, you typically see driveways with trash cans only.

The transition to recycling for us was pretty easy. A call to our trash company informed us that they do not “do” recycling, but we learned of another company who does. So now we have two cans and two different bills each month (ideally, garbage companies in the South will one day transition so that every service subscription includes both trash and recycling).

We’ve now eliminated not only food scraps and paper from our trash can (which can be composted) but also boxes, plastic, and aluminum cans. (Glass is not on the list, because our recycling center does not accept it.)

The process is simple enough: make sure the items are clean, break them down, place them in recycling instead of trash. Repeat.

For future exploration: How efficient are the recycling centers in our county/city/state? Is recycling actually helping to reduce what’s in our landfills, and where do the recycled products go?

Reuse

Another change we made was transitioning to a couple different products that reduce our waste output: reusable paper towels and reusable zipper storage bags.

I’m going to be honest with you: as of now, I’m still buying (albeit not nearly as often) paper towels. I was raised on paper towels, and I’ve seen some research about their superiority when it comes to cleanliness. Relying on them has proved to be a hard habit to break.

Our reusable paper towels hang next to the sink. The top is for dishes; the bottom is for hands.

But the reusable paper towels are considerably more durable (though not nearly as big), they dry your hands quite well, and bonus, they can be washed for reuse (though they will need to be replaced eventually).

What I’ve discovered is that I prefer to keep hand towels near the sink for drying my hands; I use paper towels (mainly) for cleaning; and I use the reusable paper towels on occasion for drying dishes or drying my hands (when a towel isn’t handy).

Though still a work in progress, my eventual goal is to stop buying paper towels altogether.

Switching to reusable zipper storage bags, on the other hand, has been a far easier change. Before our traditional storage bags (you know, the ones you use once and toss in the trash) ran out, I had these reusable ones in my cart on Amazon. I was just waiting to finish with what we had before making the switch.

It’s now been easy over a year since I’ve purchased zipper storage bags. Our reusable bags have proved handy for packing lunches, storing snacks, and stashing leftovers. I’ll warn you: the brand we purchased don’t close amazingly well. The longer we’ve used them, I find them harder to close. But that said, we’ve used them now for about a year without needing to replace them.

We've tried two sizes of reusable bags so far (this is after about a year of use).

They wash well in the top part of the dishwasher (turn them inside out). They do the job of storing food well enough. (I haven’t tried the quart size for storing meat in the freezer yet, but I’m interested and will let you know.) And they’ve saved us money (in the long term), but more important, they saved a ton of repetitive trash from funneling to our landfill.

As I learn more, I’ll share more! I hope you will too. 💛