8 Tips for Using Kitchen Scraps in Your Garden and Home

It is estimated that in 2018, the USA saved 25 million tons of food scraps that would otherwise have gone to landfills simply by composting.

When organic waste is thrown into landfills, it is unable to decompose efficiently and produces methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.

Thank goodness, there are a bunch of ways to keep food scraps out of landfills and put them to good use. Not only can they help your garden thrive, but they can also help keep your home clean and you nourished.

Check out this compilation of OGP articles that show you how to use kitchen scraps for good.

1. Ways to Use Kitchen Scraps

When it comes to gardening, using veggie scraps just makes sense. It completes the logical cycle: Plant to crop to kitchen and back to plant again. Trees, grass, flowers, and other fauna require decomposing organic matter to get their thing done. So, we make compost, feed our gardens with it, and grow more food. While most of us hopefully know by now that our food scraps can be composted, here are some thoughts as to how to otherwise use them in the garden. Check out these 7 Ways to Use Food Scraps in the Garden (They’re Not Just for Compost).

2. Grow New Plants

This brief read will take you into the world of growing food from veggie scraps, that is, the stuff you are likely to be scraping off of the old cutting board and hopefully throwing into a composting bin. You see, many fruits and veggies dig the new age and love the idea of being reused. What’s more, it is often faster to do it via scrap than it is via seed, and since it’s from something you’ve already purchased for food, the cost is nothing. Follow these tips on How to Use Veggie Scraps to Grow New Plants.

3. Teabags

People can go through several teabags a week, even multiple every day, if they are avid tea drinkers. There is the option to buy loose tea, or even grow it yourself to cut down on teabag waste, but if you do end up with some used teabags on your hands, give yourself a chance to do something fun with them. You could use them to stain wood, calm puffy eyes, or even clean your windows. One of the best ways to make great use of used teabags, however, is to use them in your garden or for your house plants. Check out these 8 Ways Used Teabags Are Great for Your Garden and House Plants.

4. Coffee Grounds

So much interest has been put on the power of the beverage produced by coffee that it has distracted us from the other great resource the coffeemaker provides: spent coffee grounds. For every pot of coffee, there is something wondrously useful that more often than not gets thrown away. Well, that just seems insane! It’s time the world knew just how wonderful coffee grounds can be, even after the coffee has been brewed. (Hint, be sure to buy organic to get the most of these benefits and avoid pesticides in your cuppa.) Check out these 10 Creative Ways to Use Spent Coffee Grounds.

5. Re-Grow Food

You don’t need to have an enormous backyard to grow some of your food.  A porchway, patio, doorway, or even a sunny windowsill is space enough to grow a little something from food scraps that you might have otherwise chucked in the bin! Next time you use any of the following produce, stop before you throw it in the trash or even the compost bin, and see if you can grow yourself a salad. Check out these 5 Produce Scraps That Re-Grow Food.

6. Lemon Peel

With the hot weather comes thirst-quenching jugs of homemade lemonade poured over ice. Plump lemons are halved and lovingly squeezed to get every drop of juice. The only snag is that we tend to throw away the rinds. And why not? They taste bitter and gross, right? Well, you might not want to just sink your teeth into an unpeeled lemon, but there are things we can do with the peel that are of enormous benefit to us. We can turn that peel into a powder that can be used in several different ways in your kitchen and elsewhere around the home. Read on to learn How to Make and Use Lemon Peel Powder.

7. Best Scraps for Your Garden

By keeping food scraps out of the trash can, we can not only help to save the planet a little bit, but we can also use those scraps in healthy ways to benefit the garden. Even if you don’t have a garden with space to compost, there are still ways for you to do your part in reusing kitchen scraps.  Check out this list of waste foodstuff that can be used simply and cleanly in your garden without owning a compost pile! Take a look at these 4 Kitchen Scraps That Work Wonders in Your Garden.

8. Banana Peels

Banana peels are packed with vitamins and minerals that can help young plants as they grow towards maturity. Sections of the banana peel can be wrapped around plant starts as they are put in the ground. As the roots find their way through the soil, they’ll soak up these nutrients and get an extra, organic, all-natural boost. Read here to learn of these 7 Things to Do with Organic Banana Peels.

Related Content:

• 4 Kitchen Scraps That Work Wonders in Your Garden
• 10 Plant-Based Recipes Featuring Kitchen Scraps!
• 15 Kitchen Scraps You Should Never Throw Away
• 6 Kitchen Scraps That Make Your House Smell Amazing
• Plant-Based Restaurant Will Serve Cocktails Made From Kitchen Scraps!

Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

• Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster, the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks.
• Reduce Your Fast Fashion Footprint: Take the initiative by standing up against fast fashion Pollution and supporting sustainable and circular brands like Tiny Rescue that raise awareness around important issues through recycled zero-waste clothing designed to be returned and remade over and over again.
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• Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, Donate if you can, grow your own food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don’t forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!