Creative ways to be more eco-friendly when baking

I am excited to host a guest post by the brilliant SimplyAlexJean, one of my fave bloggers. She has considered how to reduce the impact of everyday baking on the environment. I am all about being more ecofriendly so this article is perfect for my little blog. Check out Alex’s top tips.

Baking can be incredibly therapeutic and can be such a fun way to spend a morning or afternoon. What’s not as fun is the impact it can have environmentally if done without thought. For myself, I grew up baking and loving to experiment and make different treats. Now being more aware environmentally about my choices I realized a couple years ago there were some creative ways I could be more eco-friendly with my baking. Making these small switches honestly was so simple and, in many ways, it even made baking an easier task for me!

Do you enjoy baking? If so, read on to learn some easy ways to help make more eco-friendly choices while baking!

Buy Local Fruit & Veggies

If you like to bake with fruits and or vegetables, then check out how you can buy them locally. This can be at a farmers’ market, through local shops or simply buying direct from the farm. By buying locally you cut down on plastic, transportation impacts as well as the environmental impact of storing and placing the produce in a shop or grocery store.

Depending on where you live this can prevent seasonal challenges, however you can stock up during the months when it’s available fresh and cut and freeze it for those months where it’s tougher to find. I love to do this with berries myself!

Bulk Baking

One of my favourite ways to be more environmentally conscious with my baking is to do bulk baking. What is bulk baking? Well, it means you’re doing all your baking at once. So, this could be baking multiple goods at once, or baking them one after the other (if different temperatures). How is this an eco-friendly idea? Well, it cuts down on electricity use when you can make multiple dishes at once and doing them one after another saves the electricity/gas from warming up for each individual dish.

Personally, I gather up a couple of recipes I need for the upcoming weeks, gather all the supplies needed and then I make everything I’ll need for the next couple of weeks at once. This not only helps reduce energy usage, but also gives you some time back too!

Freeze Baked Goods

As I mentioned above, bulk baking is a great creative idea for the eco-conscious baker. However, once you’re done baking, you’re left with a lot of treats that you likely can’t eat all of before they begin to go stale or expire. A great tip is to put your baked goods into the freezer. Most baked goods freeze well and then you can take them out when you need them.

Freezing your baked goods also helps reduce waste and needing to toss food unnecessarily. This also helps with reducing environmental impacts as you can only have out what you can reasonably eat and are less likely to need to toss items.

Use Reusable Baking Supplies

This is personally one of my favourite switches I made. I did some quick research one day to investigate reusable items for baking and was shocked at the amount of gadgets and items that existed! There are so many items you can use when baking that are single use only.

Switching those to reusable items you can wash, and use again and again are so helpful! For myself I switched to using reusable muffin lines, silicone baking mats, beeswax wrap, and reusable jars for materials. These were simple swaps that I made once the previous items I owned were all used up. These items not only helped with reducing waste, but also save you money with not needing to purchase the same items all the time. Also, they are likely to save you space in your pantry too!

Bulk Refill Stores for Materials

Lastly, one of my favourite switches is buying my materials needed for baking at a bulk refill shop. I bought some wonderful glass jars and had labels made for them to help with organization. When one of those jars is getting low, or empty I include in my weekly shop a trip to the bulk refill store and simply refill that material. This is a fantastic eco-friendly idea as it cuts down on packaging, as well as cuts down on waste as you can take exactly the amount you need.

Some of my favourites from the bulk refill store are flours, salt, sugar, chocolate chips, nuts, baking powder/soda, honey, and sprinkles.

 

Do you already do any of these when you bake? Are there any that stick out to you as switches you would consider making with future baking? These ideas are all great ways to help with reducing the energy and environmental impact that baking can have and will also likely help save you some dollars as well!

Thank you to Jamie for having me onto his blog! If you’d like to check out more of my content it can be found on my blog at Simply Alex Jean. I blog about chronic illness, essential oils, lifestyle, organization and Pinterest strategies and ideas!

Thanks again for reading this useful post. I hope that Alex inspired you to think about baking practice. Check out her blog for so many brilliant articles.