Each year, tons of food – literally 1.3 billion tons – end up in the trash, adding to the ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions and putting a strain on our planet’s resources.
In the US, we waste 40% of all our food – which hurts both our wallet and the planet. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses behind the US and China.
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links; for more information please see my disclosure policy.
So how do we prevent this? Learning how to store your food properly and meal plan is half the battle.
But there are even more ways to reduce food waste. Here’s a guide to stop wasting food (and save money in the process).
utilize your leftovers
Sometimes we make too much food or can’t finish the food we ordered. Here are a few tips for preventing having too many leftovers, on top of what to do with them when you have them anyway.
dine out mindfully
Try to only order what you know you’ll finish. Knowing your body and personal tastes helps a lot here. For example, I know I love pizza and Mexican dishes so I’ll try to stick with those.
Asking about portion sizes and being aware of side dishes with entrees is helpful too. For example, many Mexican restaurants will give you a side of beans and rice – if this is too much for you, simply tell them ahead of time.
If you’re at a buffet, remind yourself that your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Take only what you like and can finish. And if you want to try something new, opt for a small portion just in case it’s not for you.
When you absolutely cannot finish your plate, get it to go so you can eat it another day. Even better if you bring your own metal tiffin for storing it.
have a leftovers night
Dedicate one night of the week to finishing the leftovers in the fridge. You can mix and match to plate up something tasty. For example, make yourself a plate of mac and cheese from Monday night, broccoli from Tuesday, and chicken cutlets from Wednesday.
think ingredients, not leftovers
Most of my leftovers tend to be side dishes (think rice, cooked veggies, etc.). Which means I always have some ready-made ingredients on hand to whip up a new meal.
Some ideas include:
- Turning extra pasta or cooked vegetables into a frittata
- Creating burritos with leftover rice, beans, meat and vegetables.
- Blending a can of tomato sauce up with leftover vegetables to create a veggie-packed sauce for pasta
- Using fried rice as a base for your next stir fry.
- Turning the last bits of roast chicken into chicken salad. Combine the chopped meat with mayonnaise, salt and pepper, celery, and chopped onions. You can put it between two slices of bread, or eat as is.
- Using leftover rice to make rice pudding.
make soup
You can’t go wrong throwing together an impromptu soup. I like the idea of ‘use-it-up’ soup that cleans out leftover steamed, roasted or grilled vegetables. Throw it into a blender with 3 to 4 cups of vegetable broth, then add any extra seasonings. Serve hot!
add fresh food to canned soup
If you have some leftover spinach, swiss chard, or mushrooms sitting in your fridge, add them to some canned soup. Just empty your canned soup into a pot and add some greens you want to use up to it. Let it simmer and cook for a bit together until the greens wilt, then remove from heat and enjoy.
use food scraps strategically
Say it with me: Food scraps are not trash. Your potato peels, strawberry tops, and carrot tops all have a place at your table – if you’re crafty enough.
I had a scrappy recipe series on my socials where I made all kinds of things like glazes from empty jam jars and wilted spinach icing. Cooking with food scraps is both rewarding and a money saver.
Here are several ways to use up food scraps:
- Use the odds, ends and peels of vegetables like carrot, celery, and onion to make veggie broth.
- Carrot, radish, and beet tops can actually be eaten (make pesto or salad).
- Strawberry tops can be used to make a delicious simple syrup for coffee, mocktails, or lemonades. Or add them right into smoothies for extra vitamins and fiber.
- Onion and garlic skins can be ground up into onion/garlic powder.
- Make citrus powder from leftover lemon and lime skin. Bake citrus peels for 2-3 hours until crispy and dry. Blend with salt, if desires. Then store in an airtight container for ~3 months.
- Save pumpkin seeds for roasting.
- Use herb stems – like basil, cilantro, and parsley – to blend into an herbal sauce by combining with mayo, salt, pepper, lemon and garlic. Or chop them up and add them to soups and stews.
- Add celery leaves to soup for extra flavor.
- Watermelon rinds can be added to smoothies or chopped up and used in stews to bulk them out. I’ve even made watermelon rind and apple jam before!
- Find ways to use up stale bread – like turning it into croutons.
I recently challenged myself to try saving and using every food scrap I had for a week. You can watch my journey below!
expiration dates decoded
Many products have a sticker labeled ‘sell-by, use-by, best-by’ on there. But you can pretty much ignore them, considering it’s impossible for the manufacture to know exactly when something goes bad.
The most ironic example of this is honey. Honey you find in stores typically has an expiration date on it – yet honey found from ancient Egypt, 1000s of years ago, is safe to eat.
Also, food is most sensitive to temperature, lighting, humidity, and proximity, which varies from home to home. Bananas may spoil faster in my house than in yours, simply based on one of these factors. No label can predict that!
here’s what those labels actually mean:
- Sell-by: Tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date.
- Use-by: Is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except when used on infant formula.
- Best-by: Indicates when a product will be of best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.
The only time you should avoid eating a food is if it’s spoiled. Spoiled foods will develop an off-putting odor, flavor or texture due to naturally occurring spoilage bacteria (more on this later). Don’t eat it if it develops such characteristics.
utilize your freezer
The freezer is a powerful tool you’re probably underutilizing. Frozen foods last longer and are a great way to stop produce from going bad before you can get to it.
Consider blanching vegetables and some fruit before freezing them – Blanching stops destructive enzymes that can cause loss of flavor, color and texture during freezing. Blanching also loosens the skin on fruits like peaches and tomatoes, allowing you to peel them with ease.
Blanching is scalding produce in boiling water for a short time, then transferring them to an ice bath before freezing. Vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, brussels sprouts and root veggies benefit most from blanching.
Blanching times will vary based on which vegetable or fruit you’re focusing on, but here’s a good guide to keep in mind. Don’t forget to label whatever you freeze with the date you froze it and what it is.
You can also freeze several unconventional items like:
- Eggs (don’t freeze in their shells – instead, crack the eggs, whisk and pour into an ice cube tray, then freeze. Keeps for up to a year).
- Pasta (Make sure to cook al dente, otherwise it may be mushy after defrosting. Keeps for ~2 months).
- Hard cheeses (Best to grate first and store in an airtight container. Keeps ~6 months).
- Nuts (Can be frozen in their shells or shelled. Keeps ~1-2 years).
- Opened wine (Freeze in ice cube trays, then transfer to freezer bags like Stasher. Add to stews, sauces, or risottos. Keeps ~6 months).
- Cake (Avoid freezing cakes with icing, filling or decoration. Freeze whole or in slices. Keeps ~6 months).
Upcycled glass jars are a great way to store frozen food. However, if freezing a liquid, always be sure to leave room at the top for expansion. And never try to stack jars.
You can cook most vegetables, meats and bread straight from frozen. But if your food does need to thaw, be mindful thawing at room temperature invites microbes that spoil good food.
Instead, try thawing in the fridge for 24 hours, or place the item in a bowl of cold water, making sure to change every 30 minutes (use the excess water to feed houseplants!).
You can also use the microwave as well. However, if you’re defrosting in a mason jar, the safest way is to let it thaw in the fridge under a plate to catch excess water. This will prevent cracking and leaks.
And of course – don’t forget about your frozen goods! Many people “lose” items in the back of the freezer so try to plan a freezer night to eat your frozen food every week or two.
one bad spot isn’t the end
If you see a brown spot on a banana or a potato, don’t toss the whole thing. I cut off the black spots and eat the rest!
However, if you notice multiple black spots or it starts to shrivel, you may need to cook it on high heat to help kill anything off. Always use your judgement – and certainly don’t chance anything if it smells rancid!
If your vegetables are a bit dry or limp, they can be rescued. But if they’re slimy, mushy, or discolored, they’re rotten.
Some veggies have tell-tale signs they’ve gone bad. For example, celery will become white and hollow, eggplants will toughen and asparagus tips will go soft and turn black.
For fruits, examine their skin. Fruits like grapes, plums and apricots should be smooth, not wrinkly. Melons shouldn’t have any squashy patches. And always avoid fruit that has mold or a bad odor.
To reduce waste, always try to compost what has gone rancid. Here’s how to compost in an apartment or backyard.
only buy what you’ll eat
Never go grocery shopping hungry – this leads to impulse buys. Instead, stick to your staples and don’t get too adventurous.
I’m not saying you can’t try new things or indulge in a treat every so often but let it be with reservation.
Some grocery stores will capitalize on trending items or seasonal products (pumpkin ice cream in the fall, anyone?). But I advise steering clear of these unless you know you like them.
Instead, allow yourself one or two snacks every week, and try to stick to things you already know you’ll enjoy (like chips and salsa or your favorite ice cream flavor).
Doing this will ensure everything gets eaten before the week is through.
For even more tips, be sure to check out my YouTube video below!
How are you saving food from going to waste? Let me know your tips in the comments!
The post How to Stop Wasting Food (And Save Money) appeared first on Going Zero Waste.
When most of us think of landfills, we think of rotting disposable diapers, apple cores, and old clothing. Our thoughts don’t usually turn to discarded construction materials. However, the U.S. generated 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s more than double the amount of municipal solid waste generated annually.
A lot of wood, concrete, bricks, glass, asphalt, and plastic are going to landfills instead of being recycled or reused. This creates a massive opportunity for improvement. Repurposing materials is a great way to reduce the ecological impact of a project. Demolition waste can be artfully repurposed in home remodeling, construction, and landscaping projects, adding beauty and charm. Reclaiming waste also helps you save money, as many people go into debt when constructing and remodeling homes.
Here are some easy strategies to help you get started.
Plan Ahead
Reclaiming materials typically takes more time than just buying new items. And it requires more planning.
It is challenging to take a cookie-cutter approach to salvaged materials. When constructing or remodeling your home, you may need to customize it to the available materials. One method is to analyze what materials are available and then plan your project design accordingly. The opposite approach is to design your project and then collect the needed reclaimed materials. When taking the latter approach, it is helpful to rely on salvaged materials that are more commonly available.
Regardless, planning ahead and having plenty of storage space is helpful.
Check Whether Your City Requires Deconstruction
A growing number of cities now require that old houses be taken apart by hand rather than knocked down, which puts far more salvaged material into circulation. Portland, Oregon, passed the first such ordinance in 2016. Today it requires deconstruction of any house or duplex built in 1940 or earlier, and the work must be done by a certified deconstruction contractor who documents every salvaged board.
San Antonio has gone furthest. Under the third phase of its ordinance, which took effect January 1, 2025, mechanical demolition is off the table for any single-family home, multi-unit building, or accessory structure built in or before 1945 anywhere in the city, and in or before 1960 in protected areas. City officials report that contractors recover about 70% of a building’s weight, with more than half of that going to reuse rather than recycling.
More than half a dozen cities from Pittsburgh to Boulder have adopted their own versions, and the ReBuilding Center and other reuse nonprofits are pushing for mandatory salvage minimums to make the rules bite. For anyone hunting materials, the practical upshot is simple: if your city has an ordinance, more old-growth lumber, doors, trim, and fixtures are moving through local salvage yards than used to.
Find Good Sources of Salvaged Materials
One of the easiest ways to find free materials and to prevent them from going to landfills is to visit demolition sites. This can be a great source of windows, doors, woodwork, fixtures, and even appliances. Construction sites can be excellent sources of surplus or slightly damaged materials and supplies. Construction dumpsters are often packed with useful materials.
It is essential to speak with the foreman to get permission before taking any materials. If you are seeking something specific, ask the contractors working on-site if they have found that window or door you want. They might be willing to set materials aside for you. But again, ask for permission first.
Antique malls, architectural salvage stores, and home improvement donation centers are good sources of anything from windows and doors to hardware, tile, and plumbing fixtures.
The Habitat for Humanity ReStore network is another valuable source of new and used building materials, and the proceeds benefit a good cause. Build Reuse, the national nonprofit for building material reuse, maintains a membership directory that will point you to salvage stores and deconstruction contractors in your region. ReuseWood.org, a directory built by the American Wood Council and Canadian Wood Council with Build Reuse, lets you search by ZIP code for barn wood, timbers, millwork, flooring, and reclaimed doors and windows.
Peer-to-peer platforms have become the fastest way to find one-off pieces. Craigslist, Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, OfferUp, and local Buy Nothing Project groups all turn up leftover tile, cabinets, pavers, and lumber from neighbors’ finished projects. Setting up saved searches and alerts beats checking in occasionally, since good material moves within hours.
Some people even purchase properties with reclaiming the materials in mind. For example, old barns are filled with gorgeous weathered lumber that can be deconstructed and repurposed.
Utilize Repurposed Materials
Beautify your home with reclaimed and repurposed wood beams and ceramic tiles.
Use cleaned-up bricks recovered from construction debris to create patios, pizza ovens, and pathways, and other attractive features for your new home.
Repurpose shipping containers to make storage sheds. Or stack them to make multi-tiered structures, like a guest room.
Use crushed concrete as aggregate for walkways and driveways.
Sinks, vanities, bathtubs, cabinets, shower stalls, light fixtures, and even toilets can be repurposed.
Find Supplies with Recycled Materials
There are also some construction materials available on the market made from recycled materials.
Plastic bottles are recycled to make composite lumber or bricks, and recycled glass is made into tile and countertops. Old newspapers or blue jeans are made into insulation products, and cork bottle stoppers can make flooring and panels. Purchasing these materials might not be as economical but it does conserve resources.
Using salvaged materials in construction and renovation projects adds character and is a great way to reduce waste. And having an eye for reuse helps conserve precious resources and protect the environment.
Editor’s Note: Originally published on October 3, 2019, this article was updated in July 2026.
The post Using Reclaimed Materials in Your Home & Yard appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/home-garden/using-reclaimed-materials-in-your-home-yard/
Smart homes are commonplace today. Now, the intelligent yard is poised to join the mix. Meet Graham Hine, CEO of ePlant, which recently introduced the TreeTag. This solar-powered monitor is attached to a tree to monitor its health and send updates wirelessly to a phone. TreeTags are placed onto the side of trees using a screw and measure minor size fluctuations in trees. For example, the bark’s contraction can indicate stress, such as a lack of water. The TreeTag includes an accelerometer to detect movement patterns that may suggest instability and a humidity sensor to augment local weather data. The TreeTag employs artificial intelligence to process and transmit its data to the cloud. You can talk to your tree using ChatGPT as an interpreter. The experience is like chatting with a friend, but it might be about how much water the tree needs to be healthy or a report on its growth and the carbon it has captured as it grows.
ePlant is among the most intriguing and fun devices we’ve seen this year. Technology can help us see the environment in new ways, bolstering our senses with data that lets us identify biases so that we can respond to climate change, local extreme weather, and drought thoughtfully and efficiently. Solar-powered devices like TreeTag, if manufactured with minimal environmental impact, can expand our sensory engagement with the health of forests, orchards, and suburban yards to reduce overwatering, preserve tree and plant species struggling with local weather changes, and potentially increase the yield of food produced per gallon of water used. You can learn more about ePlant at https://www.eplant.com/
UPDATE: ePlant has since pushed TreeTag well past the smart-yard use case that framed this conversation. In May 2025, TreeTags supplied the live physiological and environmental data behind the Avanade Intelligent Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show; sensors on 12 trees fed an app that let visitors ask the trees how they were doing, and the garden took a gold medal. The company also offers precision irrigation for growers using TreeTag as a LoRaWAN dendrometer that can serve a single vineyard block to thousands of acres.
- Subscribe to Sustainability in Your Ear on iTunes and Apple Podcasts.
- Follow Sustainability in Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube.
Editor’s Note: This episode was first published on October 23, 2023.
The post Best of Earth911 Podcast: ePlant CEO Graham Hine Listens to the Trees appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/earth911-podcast-eplant-ceo-graham-hine-listens-to-the-trees/
Satellite dishes outlast the subscriptions that put them there. Drive through almost any American neighborhood and you will see them still bolted to fascia boards and chimney straps, aimed at satellites their owners stopped paying for years ago.
The subscriber base that installed those dishes is collapsing. Pew Research Center found in July 2025 that 36% of U.S. adults still subscribe to cable or satellite TV, while 83% watch streaming services. DIRECTV and DISH told investors in 2024 that they had collectively lost 63% of their satellite subscribers since 2016.
Every one of those canceled accounts left hardware behind, and removal and recycling still fall to the subscriber, who gets little support from the provider. For lack of clear information, a lot of that hardware ends up in a landfill.
Can You Recycle Your Satellite TV Dish?
Depending on who you ask, the proper method of disposal for a satellite TV dish can be as clear as, well, a fuzzy TV signal. So let’s tune in to what a dish system is made of, because the answer determines where each piece goes.
A residential satellite system is not one product. It is four material streams bolted together:
- The reflector. The curved part everyone pictures. On modern 18- to 20-inch DIRECTV and DISH installations it is thin, powder-coated steel. Older and larger dishes are often aluminum. Either way, it is scrap metal and easily recyclable in most communities.
- The LNB. The low-noise block downconverter on the end of the arm. It holds a circuit board and is the piece that makes the system electronic waste.
- The mount and hardware. Usually galvanized steel, and usually the heaviest recyclable component in the assembly.
- Coaxial cable. Copper conductor inside plastic jacketing, which scrap yards buy separately as insulated wire.
The Institute for Environmental Research and Education recommends separating those parts of the dish before you haul anything anywhere: detach the LNB, coil the coax, and sort aluminum from steel. That takes about 20 minutes with a screwdriver and a wrench, and it is the difference between a recycler accepting your load and turning it away.
The receiver, DVR, and remotes are a separate question, and an important one. Those are usually leased. If you cancel service and keep them, you will be billed for them.
Once It’s Installed, It’s Yours
This is the part that surprises people. The dish becomes the property of the homeowner at installation. Neither provider sends a technician to take it down when you cancel, and neither is obligated to. DIRECTV’s own support forums state the position plainly: the receivers go back, the dish stays, and what happens to it next is up to you.
Renters have a related wrinkle. The FCC’s Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule protects your right to install a dish under one meter in areas under your exclusive control, such as a balcony or patio, and it limits what landlords and HOAs can prohibit. It does not cover shared roofs or exterior walls, and it does not remove your responsibility to take the dish down and repair the mounting holes when you move out.
Read your lease before you install anything.
The Rules Changed in Some States, But Not Federally
U.S. federal guidelines still do not regulate circuit boards as hazardous waste, and there is no national electronics recycling law. What exists instead is a patchwork of state and local policy.
Twenty-five states plus the District of Columbia have passed electronics recycling legislation, most of it built on producer responsibility principles, and roughly two dozen states ban electronics from landfills outright. Whether your dish system is legally landfill-bound depends entirely on your ZIP code.
One change is worth flagging because it is new and relevant. Oregon’s modernized E-Cycles program took effect January 1, 2026, and the expanded list of covered devices now includes cable and satellite receivers, routers, modems, and game consoles. Oregon residents can drop those off free. The reflector itself is not a covered device, so it still goes to scrap metal, but the electronic half of the system finally has a no-cost home in one more state.
The stakes behind these rules keep climbing. The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024 found the world generated a record 62 million metric tons of electronic waste in 2022 and formally collected and recycled just 22.3% of it. Generation is on track to hit 82 million metric tons by 2030, growing about five times faster than documented recycling.
Don’t Count on the Scrap Value
Earlier versions of this article suggested that local scrap vendors might be willing to pull the system down for the value of the materials. That is worth a reality check in 2026.
Scrap yards pay by weight and by grade. A modern 18-inch dish is a few pounds of thin, coated steel, which grades low and weighs almost nothing. The coax and the mount are worth more than the reflector, and the whole assembly is still unlikely to buy you lunch. Older six- to 12-foot aluminum C-band dishes are a genuinely different story and can be worth hauling. For the small dishes on most roofs, treat scrap as a disposal route rather than a payday, and do not expect a yard to send a crew for it.
Tips To Get You Started
Here at Earth911, we want your satellite TV dish handled properly at the end of its life. That is not the case. Here is the sequence that actually works:
- Check your provider’s recycling page first and know what it covers. DIRECTV’s recycling page issues a prepaid shipping label and routes equipment to R2-certified recyclers. DISH points customers to Best Buy and a UPS mail-in program that offers free recycling if you pay the shipping costs. Both programs are built around receivers, remotes, and small equipment. Neither is designed to take the dish off your roof.
- Return leased equipment on time. Providers typically give you about three weeks from the disconnect date before non-return fees land on your final bill. Get a receipt at the drop-off point and keep it.
- Search for a satellite dish removal service, a handyman, or a local roofing company. Roofers are the right call if the mount is through the shingles, because someone has to seal the penetrations afterward. Removal is a roof job, not a recycling job, and the two rarely come bundled.
- Find a certified recycler for the electronics. Look for R2 or e-Stewards certification, which tells you the downstream processing is audited. Use the Earth911 recycling search to find electronics and scrap metal locations near you.
- Take the reflector and mount to a scrap metal yard. Separate steel from aluminum before you go.
- Consider reuse before recycling. A working dish and LNB have a second life in free-to-air reception, RV and off-grid setups, and amateur satellite work. Offer it to others locally before you scrap it. There are also plenty of repurposing projects if you would rather keep it out of the waste stream entirely.
- Watch out for lead-generation sites. Several “satellite dish removal” domains are referral networks that sell your contact information to whichever contractor is paying, not recyclers. Ask any service directly where the material goes and whether they are certified.
Earth911 Does Not Remove or Recycle Dishes
We regularly receive inquiries about whether Earth911 offers removal services. We do not. Earth911 does not offer satellite TV dish removal or recycling. If a satellite TV provider or one of its representatives tells you otherwise, that is not accurate information.
What Comes Next for Satellite TV
The retirement wave is not finished. DIRECTV shed roughly 288,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2025 alone, according to reporting by TheStreet. EchoStar reported 6.63 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2026 after a net loss of 366,000 in three months, and its Dish DBS unit filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 restructuring on June 30, 2026. The company says Dish Network and Sling TV service continues without interruption.
For subscribers, the practical takeaway is unchanged: corporate restructuring does not come with a dish removal crew. If you are canceling, plan for the disposing of the hardware. Return what is leased, get the dish down safely, split the metal from the electronics, and route each stream to somewhere that will process it. That is a Saturday afternoon’s work that can keep your dish out of a landfill.
Related Reading
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 10, 2015. It was most recently updated in July 2026. Feature image courtesy of Alexis Lê-Quôc.
The post Need to Recycle Your Satellite TV Dish? Read This First appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/eco-tech/looking-to-recycle-your-satellite-tv-dish-read-this-first/
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