Easy Sustainable Swaps for Your Kitchen!
- Lenny Jimenez
- Jul 1, 2020
- 2 min read
The kitchen is full of opportunities to live a more sustainable life. The kitchen is also a place where you can always keep improving as you get more comfortable and advanced.
1. Straws
By now you’ve probably already heard that plastic straws are horrible for the environment, especially for marine life. The US uses millions of single-use plastic straws every day. Yes, every day! They are most used while eating out but there are still many people who buy straws to use at home.
You can replace single-use plastic straws with a plastic reusable straw. You can avoid plastic altogether with metal, glass, and bamboo straws. They usually come in a pack with different sizes and a straw cleaner. Many grocery stores sell them, especially stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joes. You can also order them on Amazon if you can’t find the ones you like in stores. The main difference in material is texture. If you like to bite your straws, you might want to opt for a reusable plastic straw.
2. Napkins and Paper towels
Paper napkins and paper towels are problematic because it takes a lot of resources to make them and they are single-use items. “In the United States, 13 billion pounds of paper towels are used each year. To make one ton of paper towels, 17 trees are cut down and 20,000 gallons of water are consumed”. If that’s not enough reason to make the switch to reusable napkins and paper towels, think of how much money you spend a year buying them!
Switching from paper napkins and paper towels might be a hard adjustment for some but once you make the switch, it is not very different than using paper. The best place to start is by replacing paper napkins with cloth napkins. They look so much nicer and all you must do is throw them in the washer after using them. Paper towels can also be replaced with a cloth. I found that it is easy to use the cloth paper towels to dry hands or dishes but not as fun with cleaning up a mess. To help with the transition, there are reusable paper towels that are also compostable.
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