Reduce Waste with Recipes – One-Pan Chocolate Cake

Looking for an easy way to reduce waste in the kitchen? This cooking tip may be so obvious we often overlook it: only use one dish. Sometimes limiting yourself to one dish—especially if you’re cooking something complicated with a lot of ingredients—may be out of the question, but trying to reduce the amount of dishes you need to wash will save water and energy when it comes time to do the dishes.

So this month we offer you a dessert recipe that does only use one pan (and not even a mixing bowl!). This quick-to-make chocolate cake can be mixed right in the pan you bake it in. How simple is that?

One-Pan Chocolate Cake

Photo: Flickr/Lisa Brewster

Ingredients 

1½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

¼ cup cocoa

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon espresso powder (optional)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon vinegar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 cup cold water or milk

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Meanwhile, measure all the dry ingredients into your pan. An 8 or 9-inch square or round pan that’s at least two inches tall will work best. Use a whisk or fork to mix the ingredients together, level out the ingredients and make three holes in the mixture. Pour vanilla into the first hole, vinegar into the second and vegetable oil into the third. Then pour the cold water or milk over the whole pan and stir everything together until it’s mixed well.

Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes. When it has cooled, you can save even more dishes by eating it right out of the pan.

Dishwashing Tip: When you have accumulated a bunch of dirty dishes, use the dishwasher to clean them (if you have one). Running a full dishwasher actually uses less water and energy than washing dishes by hand.

Knit with Plastic

Knitters have come up with some pretty brilliant ideas for making yarn. T-Shirt yarn, for example, is one popular homemade alternative to store-bought yarn. One of our favorite unique yarn projects is making yarn from plastic bags. You can use any kind of plastic bag for this project, though the thin kind used at grocery stores works best.

To make the yarn, you’ll need to roll the bag into a long tube, cut it into strips, and then tie the strips together. (There are many YouTube videos and photo tutorials that can walk you through these steps. Check out this one from Instructables or this one from Etsy.)  Once you have a significant amount of yarn, you can use it to knit (or crochet) whatever you like.

In our experience, plastic yarn can be made into an effective grocery or tote bag, which is great for shopping or a trip to the farmers market. We received the bag pictured below as a gift, and whenever we use it, it gets a lot of attention. It’s functional, has a unique texture and keeps plastic bags from going to waste.

Reduce Waste with Recipes – Spaghetti with Italian Sausage

We regularly teach cooking classes to a local youth group for boys, and as part of the classes we focus on waste, discussing ways to reduce waste when buying food, during the cooking process, and after a meal. We want to share some of our tips and recipes with you, so this month we’ll take a look at a simple recipe from the cooking class for spaghetti with Italian sausage.

Spaghetti with Italian Sausage

Ingredients

1 pound Italian sausage, ground beef, turkey, or a mixture (Meat can be left out for vegetarians!)

½ sweet onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 jar (24 oz.) spaghetti sauce

¾ teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon dried basil

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Spaghetti (about 3 ounces dry pasta per person)

Instructions

Sauté meat in a pot until browned and cooked all the way through. Add onion and cook until it’s translucent. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes. Add spaghetti sauce and herbs. Allow the mixture to gently simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Cook the spaghetti as directed on the package (usually 10-11 minutes; start timing after the water returns to a boil once you’ve added the pasta). Drain (don’t rinse with cold water). Put the noodles back in the pot and coat them with a little olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking to itself. 

After cooking, use tongs to put pasta on plates. Spoon ½ cup pasta sauce onto noodles and add Parmesan cheese if desired. 

Notes for Reducing Waste

In general, we focus a lot of attention on reducing packaging waste. For this recipe, we discussed buying spaghetti noodles in cardboard boxes rather than in plastic packages since boxes are easier to recycle. We talked about how glass jars like those from the pasta sauce can be reused, even to hold leftovers. After the meal, we made sure to pack up all the leftovers in reusable containers and sent them home with the boys in the group. These tips are simple, but they’re good habits to get into when cooking at home.

Bonus tip: If you want to make a recipe that uses spices even more eco-friendly, try eliminating the packaging altogether. Some stores sell spices in bulk, and many will let you bring your own containers to take the spices home in (so you won’t even have to use a plastic bag!). Plus, buying foods like spices in bulk is usually cheaper than buying their packaged counterparts, too.

Upcycled Bottle Cap Checkers

Looking for a fun activity for kids that will also teach them about reducing waste? Try turning to your trash for inspiration. We collected bottle caps and turned them into a checkers game that kids enjoy and that was practically free to make.

Metal bottle caps from soda or beer bottles are recyclable, but some curbside programs don’t accept them. Luckily, these caps make great materials for craft projects. With a flat piece of cardboard, markers, and paint, kids can make a homemade, reused game. Just cut the cardboard into a square, measure the squares and color them with markers, and paint the tops of half the caps one color and half another. This project offers a great hands-on way for kids to see that something that might look like trash can be reused. Plus, the game will entertain kids even after the project is complete.

Help Cut Clothing Waste: Don't Throw Away Worn or Damaged Clothing

At Trash for Peace, we are always learning about new and exciting ways to fight waste, and we'd like to share some of these tips and ideas. This week we're going to address clothing waste. People often ask what they're supposed to do with old clothes, especially worn, torn, or damaged items. The answer is you shouldn't throw them away! But we'll get to that in a minute. Here's why keeping old clothing out of landfills is so important:

Approximately 14.3 million tons of textile waste were generated in 2012, according to the EPA. Some of those old clothes and shoes—an estimated 14.4 percent—were recovered for reuse or recycling, but many ended up being incinerated or sent to landfills.

            The amount of clothing waste generated in the United States is likely related to consumer habits. The average American buys nearly 70 clothing items per year, while 50 years ago that number was only 25. Not only do we buy more clothes now, we purchase them for less money. Fast fashion, which is clothing made and sold cheaply that encourages buying more rather than reusing, is leading to an ever-increasing amount of textile waste.

Photo: Flickr/Trash to Treasure

           The average person can take concrete actions to help change this trend, though. Buying higher quality clothing that will last longer is a great step. Buying second-hand items also reduces waste. Then when it’s time to get new clothes, donating those items to charitable organizations ensures more clothing will be kept out of landfills. Most charitable organizations sell these donations in local stores or send the materials for reprocessing, and some garments enter international textile markets. So what should you do with old, damaged clothing? You should donate it, too. Most organizations like Goodwill accept clothing in any condition, and if your old jeans or T-Shirts aren't reusable, they'll get recycled. 

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

December 15, 2013

Happy Holidays from Trash for Peace! 

Our final event of the year was on December 10^th, and while we were putting together bin kits and making holiday cards out of all repurposed materials with the fabulous members from NAIFA (see photos below), it reminded us that this holiday season you could indulge without feeling any guilt of being wasteful!  We encourage you to reduce, reuse, and rethink waste every day, and it can be just as easy during the Holidays.

You can find repurposed wrapping paper and many other craft ideas at SCRAP (www.scrappdx.org), or decorate old newspaper or grocery bags to wrap gifts!

Consider giving the gift of an experience, such as going to the movies, or a massage, or a donation to your favorite nonprofit (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Even holiday trees are becoming more sustainable.  Check out the options provided by the organization “Living Christmas Trees” (livingchristmastrees.org), and don't forget to recycle your tree after the holidays!

 At the moment, I am sitting in our living room, our kitty napping to my left and our roommate’s dog napping to my right.  The lights from our “Holiday” tree are encasing the room in a gentle glow, and it is wafting the smell of blue pine and winter all around the house. 

I am reminded of how warm and cozy this time of year is, and how grateful I am to be able to bask in it.  Part of this contentment, is the feeling of accomplishment knowing all that Trash for Peace has been able to do this year, and at the same time, the excitement and challenge of knowing how much more we want and hope to do in the future.  None of it would be possible without the support of our team, and all of you. 

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and a very happy New Year.

Please stay tuned in 2014 for more exciting updates and projects from your favorite local "trashy" team at Trash for Peace. 

Warm wishes,

The Trash for Peace team

December, 2013

My goodness, it has been awhile!  The Trash for Peace team has been so ridiculously busy we have been severely neglecting our blog!

To make up for lost time, here is a quick recap of what we have been up to:

Throughout the second half of 2013, Trash for Peace built over 38 recycle bins with schools, businesses, and communities.  We worked with schools all over Portland and the larger Metro area: Forest Heights Elementary, Concord Elementary, Access Academy, Bethany Elementary, Portland State University, and more.   We also worked with Whole Foods, SCRAP, and the city of Hillsboro, and other businesses building bins, garden beds, and even a greenhouse that used over 1,000 plastic bottles!

We started a youth group program with a boys group at Dekum Court, one of Home Forward’s housing sites.   We taught leadership and team building through the hands-on techniques of turning trash into functional art.  The boys built recycle bins, a bench, and much more in a short three months this summer.

This fall we hosted our first every Trashy Trivia event, which was a huge success!  We hope to have more, perhaps every quarter.

We also piloted our new Repurposed Garden program this summer, and hope to build more garden beds and maybe even greenhouses, all out of “trash” with schools in the future.

We have more recycle-bin builds coming up in 2014, more youth programming with the boys group at Dekum, more Trashy Trivia events, and the list just keeps growing!

Speaking of growing, that is just what we have been doing, little by little, and could not do it without all of your support.  Thank you all for being a part of this movement.  We love your feedback, please send us your thoughts, ideas, suggestions!  

And please stay tuned for information on upcoming events, and more blog posts!

Love, the Trash for Peace team