Pro tip: skipping my stand mixer actually cut my food waste in half last month
I started cooking all my meals from scratch at home in Portland for a month to cut down on plastic packaging, and my grocery bill dropped from $380 to $210 while my trash bag went from three a week to one. The weird part is that when I did the math, most of my old carbon footprint came from takeout containers and half eaten leftovers, not the food itself. It made me wonder if the whole 'buy local, buy green' thing misses the point when the real win is just cooking what you already have. Has anyone else tracked their actual trash for a week and been surprised by what showed up?
Sorting my recycling one week was a wakeup call for a totally different reason. Turns out half the bin was junk mail and cardboard boxes from stuff I ordered online, not kitchen waste at all. Weird how you assume one thing is the problem and the trash tells a different story.