Tips For Your Kitchen
Reduce, Reuse and Recycle your way to a plastic bag free kitchen! Here’s how:
- There’s no need to put dry or clean rubbish in a plastic bag before putting it in the bin. Items like plastic wrapping, non-recyclable plastic containers, bottle tops etc aren’t wet or dirty, so don’t need a bag. They can go straight in the garbage bin. You can occasionally rinse your bin out with a little old washing water. Easy!
- If you do need to wrap wet or smelly garbage – like chicken bones or dirty nappies- you can reuse the dozens of plastic bags you have around the house. This includes food wrapping like bread bags, frozen food bags and the bag in the cereal box. It can also include the bags the nappies originally came in. They will keep the smells and liquid out of the other garbage, and you can still fill up the bin for a few days before emptying it in the council wheelie bin outside.
- Reduce the amount of rubbish you put in the bin by recycling food packaging and other waste materials like egg and milk cartons, glass bottles and jars, plastic yoghurt and takeaway containers. To find out what you can and can’t recycling in your local area, visit RecyclingNearYou.com.au HINT: Don't ever put your recyclable items in a plastic bag, they cause big problems for people sorting recycling and can jam recycling machinery.
- A lot of food comes in containers that are great for storage. Give glass pasta sauce and and baby food jars a second lease on life by washing and using them to store food or ‘fiddly things’ like buttons and nails. You can also give glass jars to friends, family or groups who make jams.
- Reduce your rubbish even further and make your own herb and flower garden fertiliser by composting your fruit and veggie scraps in a worm farm, compost pile or bokashi bucket. Not only can this be fun, especially for kids, it’s gives you free fertiliser for your garden or pots. For more information about whether your council provides free or cheap compost bins or worm farms visit RecyclingNearYou.com.au:
- Some supermarkets and retailers, like Aldi and Target stores nationally and many retailers in South Australia, make compostable bags available to their customers. These can be used to line your kitchen scraps bin and then you can pop that straight into your compost pile.
- If you do have plastic bags of any kind in the house, reuse these for your rubbish, to carry wet clothes after swimming or when out walking the dog.
- You can recycle your left over plastic checkout bags at most major supermarkets. For details go to RecyclingNearYou.com.au