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Five Top Tips for a Green Kitchen

(NAPS) — When it comes to going green, experts suggest starting with what you know. So, with most people spending more waking hours in their kitchen than any other room of the house, it can be the perfect place to start going green.

"A few simple changes in your kitchen routine can have a positive impact on the environment and your pocketbook," said Ginny, founder of Ginny's catalog and www.Ginnys.com. Among her top tips for a greener kitchen:

1. Buy in bulk.
Avoid overly-packaged and single-serving items in favor of large packages. Divide contents into individual or family-size servings and store in washable containers with lids, instead of plastic wrap or aluminum foil. An in-home meat slicer or food grinder saves packaging waste, money and avoids the high nitrite and fat content of pre-packaged deli meats.

2. Drink clean.
Remove lead, chlorine and other impurities from your tap water with a faucet-mounted water filter. Save money over buying bottled water, and reduce the pollution created by manufacturing, shipping and disposing of all those plastic containers. Ginny's 20,000-gallon water filter is designed to provide clean, fresh water for up to five years, eliminating the hassle and cost of replacing standard 40-gallon cartridges.

3. Compost food scraps.
Throwing food into the trash wastes a valuable resource. Turn coffee grounds, banana peels and eggshells into a rich soil conditioner for your garden and houseplants by composting them. Keep a small crock or bucket near your food prep area to collect waste, then add the contents to an outside compost bin.

4. Use cloth dishtowels.
The manufacturing of single-use paper towels is twice as energy-intensive and creates more greenhouse gases than years of machine washing dishtowels. To be truly eco-friendly, throw dirty dishtowels in with full-size loads of other laundry, wash with cold water and line dry when weather permits.

5. Heat just what you need.
Small appliances are more efficient than big ones. For cooking modest portions or heating leftovers, a microwave or toaster oven uses less energy than a full-sized stove. Ginny's Toaster Oven/Rotisserie and Countertop Convection Oven (both priced at under $100) have the capacity to cook a whole chicken, at a fraction of the energy cost of a conventional oven.