sustainable kitchen practices

An eco-friendly kitchen reduces food waste, recycles, composts, and uses sustainable practices to reduce the amount of food waste produced. By making some simple changes, creating a sustainable kitchen design is inevitable. 

Choose cookware and utensils that stand the test of time and won't have to be thrown away with your leftover casserole. That means you gotta ditch the Teflon. While the debate about the health hazards of non-stick surfaces continues, there is no doubt that it has a limited useful life. 

Go for stainless steel or cast iron instead. Though a bit of an investment, a good cast iron skillet will last for generations. Likewise, choose sturdy utensils rather than cheap ones; low-quality wooden spoons, for example, can rot, and plastic will melt if you leave it on the stove too long. Buy high-quality knives that you can sharpen by hand, and use long-lasting cloth towels instead of paper.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to experiment with cooking, but before you go out to buy a whole bunch of gadgets that you might only use once, check if there is a kitchen library in your neighborhood. You may be able to find the appliance or tool you need without purchasing something you'll barely use.

Energy-efficiency upgrades are coming fast and furious to many new appliances. An efficient dishwasher, for instance, can use a lot less water than washing the dishes by hand in the sink. But before you jump the gun and make a hasty appliance purchase, check to make sure that a repair isn't in order. If the time has indeed come to get rid of an old appliance, note that many communities have take-back programs, helping you to properly dispose of these things, which likely contain hazardous chemicals and materials.

When you replace your old-faithfuls look for the Energy Star rating, available for kitchen appliances including stoves, refrigerators, freezers, and dishwashers, then choose a sturdy model that will last and choose a simple design—you don't need an internet connection on your oven. You also don't need an oven exhaust, which tends to be a badly designed and ineffective appliance.

Avoid purchasing pre-prepared, frozen foods, and make them yourself, at home; many meals are made to be frozen and reheated without any loss in taste or quality, so there's no reason to thaw and rehydrate frozen and dehydrated foods when you can skip these steps and buy and cook fresh. 

As an added bonus, you also know exactly what is going in to your food, and, if you're diligent about sourcing it, where it came from. This option also cuts out steps of your food's lifecycle (and the associated energy in processing and transportation that comes from each step).

If you have the space, take it a step further and grow your own fruits, vegetables, using your composted kitchen waste as fertilizer.

Don't stop the DIY train there, though: you can clean your counters and hand-wash dishes with white vinegar and baking soda. Instead of shelling out for bottled water, get a filter pitcher or tap filter. You could even buy a seltzer siphon or carbonator to fizz your filtered water and flavor it with homemade syrups; we recommend the Soda Club or one of its contemporaries.

The food you bring in to your kitchen is just as important as the gadgets and appliances you have there, so buy local whenever you can. Food miles have risen near the top of eco-friendly food considerations, and the fewer miles from farm to table, the better. Organic grapes from Chile might taste good in the dead of winter, but consider the pollution caused by flying them to wherever you are.

In addition, since they're bereft of preservatives, biocides and many other nasties that inhabit conventional foods, organic foods can spoil more quickly, meaning that the longer your bunch of grapes is in transit, the less pristine its condition is likely to be.

Whenever possible, we recommend supporting a community-supported agriculture (CSA) co-op, buying from local farmers' markets or purchasing directly from farmers themselves.

Buy in bulk and cook in bulk; just make sure you can consume what you purchase and produce! (See Waste Not, Want Not below for more details on that).

Purchasing from the bulk bins means less packaging, and fewer trips to the store, and can also mean financial savings. It's not just for groceries, either: for example, you can buy bulk packages of towels intended for cleaning and detailing cars, and use them in the kitchen. They're extremely sturdy and a lot cheaper than most kitchen towels (not to mention much less disposable than paper towels).

Bulk cooking is a more efficient use of appliance energy and your time, (and a great excuse to throw a party), so cook up a nice big pot of soup and anticipate saving (and eating) lots of leftovers. And plan ahead; planning meals that can feed you and your family for a few days is a great way to shop efficiently and free up your precious leisure time.

$30 billion: Money saved by Americans using ENERGY STAR appliances, lights, and windows in 2013, saving the energy equivalent to 277 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

70 percent: The reduction in cooking time and energy use from using a pressure cooker to cook your food.

12 percent: The percent of household energy use that comes from cooking in Western Australia; compare that to 67 percent in Ghana.

Restaurants produce millions of tons of waste every year. Much of it is actually avoidable and it also costs the restaurant industry hundreds of millions of euros. One restaurant in Finland aims to reduce its waste output to zero. They do this through creative cooking and upcycling. So how about an ice cream from left over beer hops? We went to Finland to talk to chef Albert Franch Sunyer and check out some zero waste dishes. 

In this talk Peggy Chan will share why solving the climate crisis will require more than just shifting diets. In fact, we will require fundamental food education reform beginning at a grassroots level - in schools and for professionals in F&B. Small changes done at scale through helping people to understand the impact of their food choices on their health, ecosystem and our economy. 

Did you know that a third of the food produced globally goes to waste? Even though most countries struggle with drought and hunger, it is sad to know that food still goes to waste. At the Manor, at Nederburg Wine Estate however, measures have been put in place to curb food wastage from the market to food production.