Want to lose thousands of pounds… of waste, as you shed pounds off your own waist? Want to conserve energy and gain it? How big is your carbon foodprint?




If you are looking for a guilt free kitchen experience, look no further. Our friends at Greenopolis Partner Brighter Planet have come out with a paper on Carbon Foodprint — how to know and reduce your waste CO2 in the kitchen and on the plate. And our friends at Self.com have some cool tips for saving energy in the kitchen to help keep your wallet fat as you eat slim.



Did you know that the average American meal travels thousands of miles from the farm to the fork? Every bite of food you eat takes energy to grow, process, store, transport, sell, cook, and discard. But by understanding how your eating habits affect energy use, waste and global warming, you gain the power to reduce those impacts in daily living. The average American has a “carbon foodprint”- the CO2 waste that represents energy used- of over 12,000 pounds CO2e each year. That includes energy used and wasted in growing, processing, distributing, and selling food, emissions from getting it home and cooking it, and from discarding or recycling the leftover waste products.

But there’s lots you can do to reduce your carbon foodprint, and every step you take will has a whole chain of benefits. Shrinking your foodprint will help improve environmental conditions everywhere your food travels. It can save you time and money, improve the health and flavor of your diet, and build community connections.

• 25% of the average American’s foodprint comes from red meat; fats and sugars make up 21%, dairy is 17%. I know- all the good stuff. Now fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, fish, eggs and poultry make up 37%. I eat dairy, and some red meat, but it’s striking that if I stuck to the leaner 37%, I’d help the planet and my waistline.  Although I insist that chocolate is a vegetable, and no one can tell me otherwise.
• Buying local lowers the food miles. Plus I trust my local farmer whose hand I can shake more than someone across the country or the world doing who knows what to my food.
• Buy fresh and in season, too. Winter tomatoes from Maine greenhouses might have a higher energy cost then Mexican tomatoes trucked in. It’s Better to buy and can them when they are cheap and local in seasons than ship them across the land, summer or winter.
• Organically grown uses less energy, fewer or no synthetic fertilizers or nasty chemicals to grow. Better for everyone.

Once you’ve got the food back home, your kitchen consumes 21% of your total household energy, making it one of the most energy-intensive rooms in the house. And refrigerating and cooking your food accounts for about half of that. Here’s three ways to reduce that part of the equation:

• Choose glass, ceramic or our favorite here at Greenopolis, cast iron cookware. These items warm up faster and retain heat longer, conserving so much energy that you can cook your food at lower oven temps. And cast iron, unlike true love, really lasts forever.
• Use the smallest appliance for the job. Much of a big oven's heat is wasted, dissipated into the room or the walls of the oven, instead of going into the food. Don’t cook small fish in big pans. Use your microwave or small toaster oven, a single burner on the stove top, or hey, go all out and get a solar cooker. Any sunny day you can cook your dinner in the sun. Especially in summer, if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen! 
• Shut the refrigerator! One of the biggest energy users in the home, they not only leak energy when you stand there with the door open wondering what it is you want to eat, but also leak out dollars and kilowatts through bad gaskets. Keep the gaskets clean and be sure your seal is tight: Place a dollar bill in your refrigerator door. If the bill slides out after you've closed the door, you've got an energy-leaking seal.

After the meal, use an energy efficient dishwasher to wash a full load, and let it air dry. If you don’t want or have a dishwasher, fill the sinks with soapy and clear water for washing and rinsing. Don’t run the water over everything — it wastes water and energy.

And then save the leftovers and compost the rest. Put it on your garden or flower boxes after it’s humus, and it can go around again. And...

Remember these 7 tips from our friends at Brighter Planet:

• Eat fewer animals and more plants
• Buy unprocessed foods with less packaging
• Grow and harvest your own food
• Minimize car trips to restaurants and stores
• Cook at home more and eat out less
• Cook with efficient appliances and techniques
• Compost, recycle, and relish leftovers

Interesting how environmentally healthy  goes hand in  hand with body healthy. Reduce waste, reduce waist! A win-win all around. Then pass me the local organic chocolate.