Cooking as a student was my first opportunity to experiment with different plant-based products, however, this is generally on a tight budget and therefore doesn’t always lend itself to sustainable options. For example, environmental considerations and production can make organic food more expensive. However, throughout my years of cooking vegetarian and vegan meals, I have found some great hacks to reduce the cost of your food shop whilst choosing sustainable options.

Why have a sustainable kitchen?

You might be asking, why do I need to engage in sustainability? What difference can I make? Well, there are approximately 757,000 full-time undergraduate applicants, and this creates a huge opportunity for change. There is a misconception that to make a difference each component of your life must be sustainable, but this isn’t true – it is more impactful for everyone to engage in some way than for only a small number to do it perfectly.

Meal Plan

Let’s start by discussing how planning our food shop before we enter the shop can save us so much money. Food shops are strategically laid out to entice us to buy things we don’t need; I am just as guilty as the next person for falling for this! However, if you plan what meals you want, and identify the ingredients you need, you will simply be able to purchase everything in one shop rather than going in three times and being susceptible to the same marketing, leaving with more than you planned each time. If you want to take this a step further, you can plan meals which use the same ingredients, for example, if I were to make a tofu chilli con carne, could I also make tofu tacos to make sure I’m not wasting ingredients? Not only will this save money, but it reduces the amount of food waste we produce.

Wasting food is a huge source of resource waste. Getting produce from its origin to your kitchen requires diesel and petrol vehicles, which releases greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. Once we throw this food away, it makes its way to a landfill where it decomposes and releases methane, another greenhouse gas. This is the first tier of effects which food waste has on the environment; however, the impacts go further. If we throw food away, we still need to consume the same number of meals, therefore we buy food to replace this, increasing the demand. This increase in demand means there is more pressure on producers to increase their yield, often leading to deforestation, overgrazing, and overfishing. All of these activities destroy people’s homes and natural habitats.

If you regularly eat meat, try to cut down on the amount of meat you consume, maybe keep it to a few meals a week rather than every day. Going from a high meat diet to a low meat diet can reduce your carbon footprint by from 2.6 tonnes of carbon per year to 1.7 tonnes of carbon per year. There are many delicious meat-free recipes out there!

Shopping

So, we’ve got our shopping list with the ingredients we need to make the planned meals, how do I ensure what I buy is good for the Earth? There are several things you can do whilst shopping to reduce your carbon footprint, this includes buying seasonal fruit and veg which is local to your area/nation. This means it hasn’t travelled overseas using vast amounts of oil/gas to reach the shelves. Additionally, the shorter travel period means the nutrients are held for longer and are more likely to be harvested at their peak, making it taste even better.

Instead of buying veg in plastic packaging, try the loose option, it’s often cheaper and you’re not committed to using 14 carrots in 3 days! Whilst we’re on the subject, remember to take shopping bags, don’t buy another plastic bag which will only be added to the mountain you already own, it’s a waste of money and resources.

I like to shop at the cheapest and closest shop to me, like many students, I don’t have a car, so I’m restricted to my bike and public transport. This often leaves me with chain supermarkets, however, where I can I try to support local businesses who often sell local produce. For example, I take my spare jars and fill them up at my universities on campus, student-run, vegan and organic co-op (Scoop). Many of these ingredients are dry, but everything is sold at the price it is bought from the supplier, making it cheaper! I’m also not committed to buying a whole jar of something I may only need a teaspoon of and will inevitably throw away at the end of the year.

Further, I like to look out for sustainable certifications, these are often Fair Trade, B Corp, Vegan Society or Rainforest Alliance when it comes to food and drinks. Whilst this does not guarantee the company is sustainable, it suggests they are taking social and environmental factors into consideration.

Meal Prep

Finally, we’ll discuss how we can be efficient with the cooking of food. I often make two portions, one for dinner and the other for lunch the next day. This means I’m less likely to buy food on the go, reducing plastic packaging, waste, and the hole in my pocket. My favourite way to do this is with pasta as it can be eaten hot or cold. This way I can also trace where my meal has come from and how long it has been sitting in a fridge.

There are many different ways we can pursue a sustainable kitchen, and it’s down to us to make these changes and take responsibility for sustainable eating.

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