I am reading an article in the November 2016 issue of 5280 magazine on food waste. The article covers a variety of topics associated with food waste in the U.S. and I will likely write more than one blog post inspired by the article. For today, I will start with the statement that according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), households in the U.S. throw away 25% of the food they buy. Throwing away the food you buy wastes all the resources used to produce, prepare, and transport the food, in addition to being a big waste of your money. Also, the wasted food produces methane when it decomposes in the landfill. There are many reasons to reduce the amount of food wasted after you bring it home. Today we’ll focus on leftovers because they can be a big contribution to the volume of wasted food. Some ideas that work for me:
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Receipts printed on thermal paper (the smooth, glossy receipts with dark black print) are coated with chemicals. During printing, the thermal paper passes over a print head that uses heat to burn areas of the receipt corresponding to the letters and numbers on the receipt. A receipt is probably thermal paper if it discolors easily when scratched with a coin or paperclip. Three reasons why thermal paper is a sustainability issue:
Unless we require a receipt for taxes, reimbursement by an employer, or so we have the option to later return an item to the store, most of us throw away the receipts we get at the gas station or at stores. If you don’t need the receipt, try to avoid having one printed. It saves the manufacturing and transportation resources required to produce the receipt and keeps the receipt out of the landfill or recycling station. When I researched why some types of receipts cannot be recycled in many areas of the country, I learned that chemicals associated with certain types of receipts are harmful, which is another reason to avoid creating these receipts. I will discuss the chemical issues with receipts printed on thermal paper in the next post because the combined post is too long.
If you have a garage attached to your house, the garage can be part of the energy saving strategy for your house. When it is cold outside, the garage helps insulate that wall of the house from the cold temperatures outside. Keeping the garage door tightly shut when you are not using it keeps the warmer air inside the garage, which reduces the heat loss from your house. In summer, if the air inside your garage becomes very hot during the day, some of that heat will conduct through the wall into your house. Opening the garage door in the evening when the outdoor temperature begins to drop will will move that hot air outside and away from the wall of your house so it isn’t warming the inside of your house.
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