The Brighter Planet Blog

Entering the contest

Participating is cake.  Once you’ve taken 30 seconds to create an account, just browse the 5 categories below, find tips you’ve got experience with, and click “I DID THIS.”  Add your stories, pictures, and videos, keeping in mind the judging criteria — and remember, you can enter once for each of the 25 tips!  Check out what other people are up to, and vote by clicking the “like” button for experiences you want to win.  And be sure to let your friends know, because the more votes your experiences get, the better your chances of taking home a sweet sustainable cooking prize!

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CATEGORIES and TIPS:

1. Menu and Dining Planning

Like anything else in life, planning ahead means getting the most for your money and time while minimizing waste. Whether it’s lunch for one, dinner for the family, holiday gatherings or large parties, being organized is an important way not just to save time and money, but also to reduce environmental impact.

• Plan a full week’s worth of exciting, mouth-watering meals
• Plan dinners with creative use of leftovers in mind
• Plan communal meals
• When traveling, plan a picnic to eat on the road
• Plan ahead to minimize trips to the store

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2. Ingredients

Choosing foodstuffs based on where they come from, how they’re grown, and how they’re packaged can make a big difference in the fight against climate change. On average, eleven percent of the carbon footprint of food in the store comes from transportation, and another eighty-four percent comes from production. But those impacts vary drastically depending on the type of farming, and they type of food—for example, red meat has 4 times the impact per calorie as grains, whereas poultry and fish have an impact twice that of grains. By changing what the types of food you buy, aiming for local in-season ingredients, and reducing packaging wherever possible, you can make significant cuts in your impact on climate change.

• Eat foods you already have – especially leftovers
• Eat less meat – and when you do, make it climate-friendly meat
• Eat local, organic, in-season foods
• Eat foods with less packaging and processing
• Choose your drinks

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3.  Food Sources

Today, whether we live in a city, a town, or a rural setting, we have unprecedented diversity in where we get our food.  Restaurants, stores, markets, farms, gardens, and even websites offer an enormous range of choice in where to source your next meal. And that diversity brings with it many possibilities for reducing your culinary footprint. Adjust your food sources to reduce your impact on climate change, and share your ideas and experiences here!
• Get in touch with your hunter/gatherer roots
• Grow your own food
• Support grocers with sustainable practices
• Shop at the farmers’ market and join a CSA
• Support restaurants with sustainable practices

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4.  Techniques

The “how” of cooking—the techniques you use—can guzzle even more energy than producing the food. The environmental impacts of storing, preparing, serving, and disposing of food add up to an impressive sum. Changing the techniques you use in the kitchen—how you rethink meal preparation, when you use or avoid appliances, and what you do with the waste—can make a big difference in reducing the climate footprint of your diet. Work to lighten your impact by tweaking your tactics, and tell us about how you’re doing it!
• Reduce energy use while cooking
• Reduce energy use while cleaning up
• Preserve summer’s bounty
• Reduce refuse
• Experiment with “found” ingredients in your pantry, fridge and freezer

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5.  Appliances, Gadgets, and Gizmos

From gadgets and gizmos to supplies and appliances, we all rely on, and love, the tools that surround us in the kitchen. The cooking tools we choose to use make a big difference on energy use in the kitchen, and on energy use during the production and disposal stages of these products. Although on average kitchens occupy only an eighth of total household area, they use a quarter of all household energy. At 30 percent of kitchen energy, fridges and freezers are the biggest kitchen energy users, followed by stoves and ovens at 14% and dishwashers at 9%; the remainder is consumed by hot water, lighting, and smaller appliances. Being conscious of efficiency, durability, necessity, and recyclability when you’re outfitting your kitchen is an important way to limit your dining impacts. How are you making a difference in your choice of kitchen tools?
• Choose quality, sustainable kitchenware
• Buy secondhand, and pass on unused gadgets
• Choose efficient appliances
• Change how you use your appliances, and keep them running well
• Choose reusable instead of disposable

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