Little ways to waste less

I’ll admit that I don’t have the world’s lowest impact lifestyle. I live in a suburban house and drive most places. But even for those of us who aren’t winning environmental awards, a few little choices can cut down on the amount of waste we produce. That’s more efficient…and tends to save some money as well. Here are a few very easy ways to be greener.

Master some use-it-up recipes. Stir fries, soups, and egg dishes tend to be flexible enough to allow you to incorporate all kinds of foods that might otherwise go to waste.

For instance, if you’ve got some leftover protein, you can cook this in a pan with lots of different veggies, some sort of sauce, and serve over rice. My personal favorite option is leftover steak, broccoli, and spinach over rice, served with chipotle mayo on the side.

Or you can fold similar ingredients (with cheese, if desired) into scrambled eggs and have an omelet. I like using pepperoni in my omelets for a little extra kick.

Soups can likewise incorporate a lot of leftover ingredients. Just brown some garlic and onion, add any veggies and meat you’re trying to use up, and then add stock and simmer. (Some people make their own stock if they’ve cooked a whole chicken or something but we’re going for easy tips here!)

It might help to always have rice, eggs, and stock on hand to make these dishes possible, but these ingredients tend to be pretty basic kitchen staples. Challenge yourself to a use-it-up dinner this week and see how it goes!

Add a little water. There might be something left in that jar or tube. When I’m cooking pasta sauce, after I pour the jar into my pan (with browned Italian sausage and veggies), I swirl a little water around the jar (with the lid on) to get the last bits of sauce out. This doesn’t dilute the sauce much, but if you’re worried about that, you could use a little bit of leftover red wine instead!

Similarly, adding a little water can stretch the life of shampoo, body wash, even liquid concealer. For things you can’t get water into (like toothpaste tubes), when squeezing stops working, you could cut the tube open to get another few days. Hey, it’s the little things!

Keep grocery bags in your car. Grocery stores in my county can no longer hand out plastic bags, or give you any sort of bag for free. So we keep reusable bags in the car. Once the groceries are unloaded in the house, the bags go right back in the car. This means the bags are available, even for unplanned grocery stops. Even if you don’t have the same rules in your area, it’s nice not to have to dump plastic bags, so buy a few sturdy ones and toss them in the trunk so you can use them at least a few times.

Use the most efficient car for errands. We bought a new minivan for the family last fall. Since I drive a 2011 car, it’s been amazing to me to see how much quicker my car goes through gas than the 2023 (hybrid) van does. Most of the time, my car is the one that’s available to me. But on a weekend, if I have a choice, the van is a better bet. If you have a significant efficiency differential between your cars, it might be worth thinking about this too.

Use disposable items twice (if you can). Say you’ve heated up a cookie in the microwave on a paper towel. That towel could likely still be used to clean up a mess later. We keep still-usable paper towel scraps next to the roll and aim to reach for those first. Same with tin foil. If it wasn’t used for a messy job the first time, likely it can be redeployed for a second tour of duty, as can Ziploc bags. It might be better to use re-usable versions of all of these, and that’s certainly worth looking into, but even disposable items don’t need to be quite as disposable as advertised.

Shop the hand-me-downs (and second-hand sites) first. We all need and want new clothes sometimes. That said, even older kids with their own strong tastes might be tempted by a piece or two from a sibling’s or a parent’s closet, and that can reduce the amount of clothes you need to buy overall. My pre-teen daughter has started pulling some shirts from my closet. My 16-year-old and 14-year-old sons have very different styles, but the 16-year-old had bought a rather stylish hoodie a few years (and a few sizes) ago that the 14-year-old decided he liked enough to wear. I’ve started buying a fair number of things from Poshmark. My main motivation is finding items I like that the original manufacturers no longer make, but hey, wasting less is nice too!

Choose Amazon Day delivery. In general, online shopping is pretty efficient. One delivery van making multiple stops uses less energy than fifty people driving their own cars to and from a store. It does, however, wind up producing a lot of boxes. If you consolidate your deliveries on one day for anything that isn’t quite so urgent, you can wind up using less packaging.

Use the other side. I’m sure we could all print less than we do. But for those of us who are printing things, printing on both sides is an option, or for one page type things, using the back for something else. My “Recording” sign (telling people not to come into my office) is written on the back of one kid’s science report!

What are some strategies you use to waste less?

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