Monday is Earth Day, but there are things you can do in your own kitchen to celebrate every day. It’s what Rob Rubba, last year’s James Beard Award winner for Best Chef in America, does in his Oyster Oyster kitchen.
He recently added to his growing list of accolades when he won a District Sustainability Award in March.
“If you want to be more sustainable in your own kitchen, if it’s from a home perspective, or even a professional kitchen, I’d say get involved in a composting program,” Rubba said. “There’s so many things that we just throw in the trash that end up in landfills, I think it’s a great way to contribute back the soil, and make a better place.”
That list of things you can compost includes coffee grounds, which are great additives to your garden or plants right off the bat, as well as other food scraps you’re getting rid of.
“As long as you haven’t wiped with chemicals — like you clean up a little water spill, your paper towels can go in there,” Rubba told WTOP. “Bones, if you’re an omnivore, you can throw your bones in there. … Basically, anything that you would consume, or is the outer natural shell of it, can go into the compost bin. So if it’s natural, it can go into your composting.”
While Rubba is a vegetarian, he said you can also use old bones to make soup broths as well. But beyond composting and reusing food, he said avoiding plastic wraps and prepackaged foods is also more environmentally friendly, as hard as it can be.
“Buy all the loose stuff. Don’t really rely on packaging,” he said. “We just create so much plastic waste out there by buying prepackaged things. Just buy the loose stuff. I think you can find that at farmers’ markets, even your local grocery store. You can buy loose produce and ingredients that way.”
When it comes to storing leftovers, resealable containers are better for the earth than plastic wraps or foils. Try to recycle and reuse as much as you can, Rubba added.
“It’s just really being aware of your waste. As a consumer … don’t overbuy. I think that’s one thing. We get excited, we go to the market, we buy a bunch of things and we get busy in our lives that are so complex, that we then go into the fridge and things are rotten or whatever. I think it’s a good way to avoid that,” he said.
“Question ‘how did this get here?’ Like what was the process of me getting this ingredient? Was it sustainably delivered to me or grown? There’s a lot to it. It’s not just what’s on the plate. It’s how it gets to the plate that matters,” he added.
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