Shrink Your Cookprint
By Linda Mason Hunter

(First published in FiftySomething, a publication of The Des Moines Register)

A “cookprint” is a measure of your carbon footprint in the kitchen—how much energy, water, and carbon dioxide it takes to grow, ship, buy, store, and prepare your food. Reducing your cookprint can go a long ways towards reducing your carbon emissions, therefore slowing the pace of global warming. Buying local and organic is a start, but it’s not enough. There’s more you can do—lots more. Going green is all about choices. Here’s a jump start:

Turn off your dishwasher’s dry cycle. This easy adjustment can reduce your home’s energy use by 15 to 50% and could save $25 a year in electricity bills, according to IdealBite.com. Your dishes will still dry, it just takes longer. If there’s no off switch for the drying cycle, open the door when the cycle starts and let the dishes air dry.

Don’t pre-rinse your dishes. Dishwashers made in the last ten years are designed to handle food residue. Simply scrape leftover food into the compost bin or trash, then put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Let your dishwasher do the dirty work. If you make proper use of their efficiency, dishwashers are more efficient than washing dishes by hand.

Use a toaster oven. A well-insulated toaster oven, with plenty of room for air to circulate around it, consumes half the energy of a conventional oven, especially if it’s rated Energy Star. Toaster ovens also waste less fuel: both broiler and oven functions heat up and cool down faster. And it keeps the kitchen cooler in summer.

Nix the garbage disposal. If your garbage disposal breaks, remove it and do without. Garbage disposals bring unnecessary energy and water consumption to the waste process. Composting, even regular trash disposal, are better options, according to the book Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe (DeCapo, 2009). Garbage disposals don’t come with Energy Star ratings.

Use a convection oven. Many ovens come with a convection option. If yours does, use it. A convection ovens use 25% less energy than a standard oven. Because air keeps moving, it cooks 25 to 30% quicker than a traditional oven, so it produces fewer greenhouse gases. The type of fuel is the same, as are the type of emissions; there are just fewer of them.

Store produce in ethylene-absorbing bags. Ethylene is a gas naturally released by produce. When produce is ripe, the gas speeds up decay and takes away freshness. Regular plastic bags don’t breathe, so they trap ethylene gas and shorten shelf-life. Ethylene-absorbing bags work to keep fruits and vegetables fresher. You can buy them under various brand names, such as Evert-Green, BioFresh, and Debbie Meyer GreenBags, available at Campbells Nutrition Centers. They’re reuseable, so bring them with you, load your produce into them as you shop, then plunk them directly into your refrigerator bins.

© copyright 2009, Linda Mason Hunter

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