Do you love coffee and tea but feel want to feel like you are not being eco-friendly with wasting the disposable cups on campus? Here are some zero waste tips for you and your favorite drinks!  

• Use a Reusable Coffee Filter. 

Purchasing a reusable filter can help reduce waste and save money. If you already have a coffee maker at home like a Keurig, you can use a reusable k-cup to put in your Keurig rather than the plastic disposable k-cups. All you must have is your favorited ground coffee and pour it into the reusable k-cup.  

• Bring your drink or tea to go.  

You can invest a non-plastic, reusable car cup and take with it wherever you go. Plus, you can enjoy the coffee or tea you made yourself!  

We love our iCommute mugs!  

• Compost Used Grounds. 

You can compost your coffee grounds; they provide all sorts of benefits to the ground or your garden if you have one! Composting your tea leaves provides a rich nutritional fertilizer for your garden.  

• Choose your drink wisely! 

 Look out for brands that fair trade, organic and eco-friendly. The brands from North America tend to be more environmentally friendly and conscious of how they grow coffee beans. Feel free to research brands and companies that you like the best! 

• You can use plant-based substitutes for milk. 

Plant-based milks are more sustainable than cow’s milk when it comes to the environment. Soy milk is one of the best substitutes because it can be used as a replacement for many recipes for cooking and baking. 

Here is a quick comparison of CABS versus COTA to help you utilize FREE public transportation services available to all Ohio State Students on the Columbus Campus: 

CABS (Campus Area Bus Service): 

• Free transportation service by the Ohio State University 
• Routes include BL (Buckeye Loop), CLS (Campus Loop South), MC (Med Center Express), WC (West Campus), ER (East Residential), as well as Medical Center Shuttles 
• Real-time tracking can be used via the Ohio State Mobile App 

For more information on routes and other information, please visit https://ttm.osu.edu/cabs. 

COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority): 

• Pricing included in annual student fees 
• Swipe your BuckID to enjoy unlimited rides around central Ohio! 
• Routes through/around campus include Line 1, Line 2, Line 102, Line 4, Line 8, Line 22, Line 31, NightOWL, and AirConnect 
• Tracking can be used through different Ohio Transportation apps (I.e., Transit App) 

All undergraduate, graduate, and professional students are opted-in to the program if they are enrolled in classes at the Ohio State University. For more information on routes and other information, please visit https://www.cota.com/osu-students/.  

Please remember to always wear a face mask and remain physically distanced while using public transportation! 

Foodprint.org is a website that offers tips on shopping sustainably for food.  

Sustainable shopping includes where you shop for food, what you buy, how you use food, and how you discard of it.  

The best places to shop sustainably are local food markets. If you can grow food yourself, that’s even better. Local foods have a lower carbon footprint due to a lower carbon emission associated with shipping.  

All foods and products have a different carbon footprint. Even two different brands of the same product have different carbon footprints, so understanding what we are buying and where it comes from is important for sustainable shopping! Food labels tell us a lot about where our food is from and how it was produced, but they are not always the easiest to understand or read. Foodprint.org provides a wonderful, in-depth look at reading food labels at this link https://foodprint.org/eating-sustainably/food-label-guide/ 

Cooking at home is a great opportunity to lower your carbon footprint. Eating out or buying prepackaged meals means that a lot of the sourcing, packaging, and ingredients are out of your control. It can be fun to learn and try new recipes, and even if its difficult to get started, it is rewarding to try a new recipe and love it! This blog has many resources for sustainable recipes that contain little to no meat products and consist of local ingredients; however, you can make every meal more sustainable by reducing meat in meals, using the parts of veggies you normally toss (like stems of broccoli or cauliflower), or composting leftovers. On average people throw away more than 25% of the food they buy. 

Sustainable shopping and cooking often means saving money through using more of what you buy and finding creative ways to use leftover ingredients. 

Friendsgiving has been one of my favorite college traditions since moving off-campus. Getting together with my roommates and friends and cooking delicious food is an enjoyable sendoff pre-holiday season. This year especially, with classes going online after Thanksgiving and not resuming in-person until mid-January, most of us will have a longer time until we get to see our roommates again, making celebrations like this even more special!  

I know my Friendsgiving celebration will look a little different this year compared to years past, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be skimping out on any part of the celebration! One of the best things about Friendsgiving is you can make it as complicated or as easy as you want. Does your family have a special recipe you want to try your hand at cooking? Or do you prefer making boxed mac and cheese as a delectable side dish? Either option is totally fine! 

Below I’ve included a (non-exhaustive) checklist of what to include for your Friendsgiving meal as well as some tips to make your celebration successful, safe and healthy! 

Friendsgiving Checklist: 

• A main dish  

• • Test your cooking skills and try to cook a turkey, or if that seems too daunting, any other meat dish would be a fine substitute  
  • If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, but your family still serves meat at your regular Thanksgiving, like me, this would be the perfect opportunity to experiment with a plant-based alternative! 

• Side Dish #1 – Mac and Cheese  

• • Like I mentioned above, whether it’s boxed or homemade, mac and cheese is a MUST  

• Side Dish #2 – All the potatoes  

• • Mashed potatoes? Sweet potatoes? Why not both? 

• Side Dish #3 –Stuffing 

• • My personal favorite! 

• Side Dish #4 – Vegetable of choice  

• • Brussel sprouts are usually my go–to, but a green bean casserole is also a great option 

• Dessert 

• • Friendsgiving wouldn’t be complete without dessert! Make you favorite type of pie or keep it simple with a store bought one

 Tips: 

1. Plan ahead! If you’re anything like me, you probably rarely cook this many dishes at once. Make sure you know the oven temperature and cook time of all your dishes, so everything gets done at relatively the same time. Ask your guests about any allergies they have so you know what dishes need to remain separate. 
2. Prep your workspace. Cooking this many dishes requires a lot of space, so make sure your counter space is clean and organized. 
3. Split up the tasks. Have each of your roommates pick a dish and make it. 
4. Decorate your house! The smells coming from the kitchen are not the only thing that needs to be festive. 
5. Make it a potluck! But still make sure you are following physical distancing guidelines and not having a gathering of more than 10 people. If you would like to include more than 10  friends, assign each household different recipes and deliver portions of it to each other’s houses. 
6. Save your leftovers! Here at reduce, reuse, recipe we still believe in minimizing food waste – even for holidays!  
7. The celebration doesn’t have to end when you stop eating! Watch your favorite holiday movie or play a board game with your friends over zoom. 

As a college student, I’m always looking for ways to save money. That includes when shopping at the grocery store! Buying nutritious and filling meals for a week shouldn’t break the bank, especially when you plan ahead. Here are my top 5 tips that I follow when grocery shopping to keep myself within a budget: 

1. Shop from your own pantry first 

How many times have you gone to the store, passed an item, and thought “Oh I think I need more of this!” only to come home and add it to the collection of unused pantry items? I know I’ve been guilty of this. Before you go to the store and even before you make a list, check to see what you are stocked up on first. Do you have a can of black beans collecting dust in the back of your pantry? Or have a veggie in your fridge about to go bad? Incorporate those items into your meals for the upcoming week!  

2. Make a list! 

Write out what you plan to eat for every meal of the week. Then list out the ingredients required to make each of those meals. Plan to make meals that require similar ingredients so there is less of a chance of you buying an ingredient and it going to waste. Be sure to include snacks to this list as well! 

3. … and stick to it! 

I know how tempting it is to add items to your cart while shopping, but this is usually the biggest culprit to your total being much larger than you expected at the end of your grocery trip. My biggest tip to combat this is, if you can avoid it, do not go shopping while hungry! When I’m hungry I almost always buy more things at the grocery store than what I need. 

4. Sign up for grocery store loyalty programs 

Most grocery stores have loyalty programs with deals and discounts only offered to those enrolled. These are usually free to sign up for and they usually have perks beyond discounts on groceries such as discounts on gas! If you don’t feel like signing up yourself, check with family members and friends to see if you could use theirs.  

5. Buy in bulk  

Shopping at wholesale clubs like Costco or Sam’s Club is another great way to save money household necessities. However, I only recommend this if a family member, friend, or roommate already have a membership to these places because it can be costly for a college student.  Buying in bulk usually has a larger up-front cost, but you save money in the long run because you don’t have to replace household items as frequently as when you buy them in smaller quantities. If you have roommates, I’d recommend splitting the cost of shared household items, like toilet paper, dish soap, etc. so you are both saving money. 

Another great, and cheap, bulk buy option is Best Food Forward, a student organization we have mentioned on the blog before. Through them, you can purchase fresh fruits and veggies at an average of 50% the cost you’d be paying at a grocery store. Check out their website (https://www.bestfoodforward.org/) to learn more about ordering food through them.  

A bowl of ice cream is a staple dessert during the summertime. Although ice cream is usually made from traditional dairy products, it is not the most sustainable way to eat ice cream. Many popular ice cream brands provide their own option of vegan ice cream. These ice cream flavors use nondairy options in their ingredients such as almond milk, oat milk, cashew milk, coconut milk, pea milk, macadamia milk, soy milk, etc. To make your dessert more sustainable and environmentally friendly this summer, try one of these delicious options for vegan ice cream! 

One ice cream brand that remains many people’s favorite is Ben & Jerry’s. The company sells two non-dairy options, one using sunflower butter and the other using almond milk. The sunflower butter pints have three flavors which include Milk and Cookies and Crème Brûlée Cookie. The almond milk ice cream comes in 12 different flavors, some of the most notable ones being Peanut Butter & Cookies, Coffee Carmel Fudge, and Cinnamon Buns. 

Other popular ice cream brands that have a vegan option are Haagen Das, Halo Top, Archer Farms, Breyer’s, Jeni’s, and Talenti. Breyer’s carries two flavors of almond milk ice cream: Vanilla Peanut Butter and Cookies & Cream. Jeni’s, a Columbus-based ice cream company has nondairy flavors of Cold Brew with Coconut Cream and Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate Truffle. Talenti, a gelato brand, offers non-dairy flavors in Alphonso Mango, Roman Raspberry, and Peanut Butter Fudge. These brands are sold at common grocery stores and should not be too difficult to find. 

In terms of ice cream brands that are solely vegan, check out brands like NadaMoo!, Arctic Zero, Cado (made from avocados!), Swedish Glace, Van Leeuwen, and So Delicious. These might be trickier to find in places like Kroger and Giant Eagle, but by going on the brand’s website you’ll be able to use the store locator feature to find them at a store near you. 

By making these switches in your everyday diet, you’re making a positive contribution to the environment. You might also find a new favorite flavor of ice cream!  

Some of Ben & Jerry’s sunflower butter options!

Do you ever peek into your refrigerator and can’t decide on what to make? Your fridge is stocked with a couple ingredients of this, a couple ingredients of that, but nothing that you can picture summing up a whole meal. A fun way to pair ingredients together and spark a little inspiration in your kitchen is by using a recipe generator website! These websites allow you to enter the contents of your kitchen and does the brainstorming for you. The generator takes the ingredients you enter and pulls from a database of recipes from popular cooking websites to match. The search is customizable as well, with options to search by kind of meal, appetizer, snack, or dessert, or to find only vegetarian, gluten-free, low-carb, or vegan recipes. Seeking out recipes to use up the last ingredients couple ingredients in your kitchen instead of throwing them away is sustainable, intentional, and cost efficient. 

The following are some examples of recipe’s I’ve found plugging in my own kitchen’s food! 

• Raw Avocado and Broccoli Salad 
• Frozen Yogurt Bars 
• Cinnamon Yogurt Fruit Dip 
• Cauliflower Cakes 
• Avocado Breakfast Pizza 
• BBQ Chicken Sweet Potatoes 
• Crock Pot Orange Chicken 
• Omelet Egg Roll 
• BBQ Lettuce Cups 
• Buffalo Chicken Grilled Cheese 

The following are examples of recipe generator websites. Plug in the ingredients in your kitchen and try out a recipe! Don’t forget to tag @offcampus_osu to show us your food! 

https://myfridgefood.com/ 

https://www.supercook.com/#/recipes 

Having a pet is one of the biggest joys of life, but sometimes it is not the most sustainable thing in the world. I have had cats my whole life, and after starting work on this blog, I started to think of some more ways I could incorporate sustainability into my pet-raising.  

Here are some things to look for when trying to find sustainable pet supplies: 

Pet Beds: 

• Try and look for pet beds that are made with a recycled stuffing 
• There are some small companies that make pet beds filled with stuffing made from recycled plastic bottles! 
• There are also plenty of companies that use organic fiber materials or hemp for the exterior of the pet beds 
• If you are good at sewing, you could even make your own sustainable pet bed by upcycling things you were planning on throwing away! 
• Use an old set of sheets or towels and stuff it with old t-shirts 

Dog Treats:

• The best low-waste, sustainable option for dog treats are actually antlers! Deer lose their antlers naturally, and it is important to find antlers from a reliable source that you know is sourcing these antlers ethically- there are many options on Etsy! 
• Of course, you can also make your own pet treats! 

• Make sure to do your research and be aware of foods that can be toxic to your pet before trying to make anything yourself 

Pet Toys:

• Pet toys made from hemp are some of the most sustainable options for toys for your pet! 
• You can always DIY a toy from some old clothes- most dogs or cats will probably destroy soft, stuffed toys quickly, so you might as well make your own! 
• Additionally, when looking for rubber toys, try to make sure the rubber is 100% natural and not synthetic 

Pet Waste: 

• There is no need to use basic plastic bags to clean up your pet’s waste, instead, look for biodegradable bags that are a lot better for the environment 

• You can also use old newspaper to pick up pet waste! 

• Additionally, make sure you switch to a sustainable cat litter 

• Look for litter made from corn, grass or wood! 

Pet Cleaning: 

• You can easily make your own pet cleaner 

• Just use white vinegar and baking soda to help clean up pet messes 

• The best option for pet cleaners is to cut out toxic chemicals, they simply aren’t necessary, instead, look for pet cleaners that are either plant-based or enzyme-based 

Overall, it is relatively easy to find sustainable pet supplies if you look hard enough, and as you can see, you can even make your own pet supplies! 

(Inspiration from https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/cleaning/tips/a24885/make-at-home-cleaners/) 

It takes a little bit of work, but these homemade cleaning supplies are good for the environment, and cheaper than buying cleaning supplies at the grocery store- also you might just have a few of these things hanging around anyway! 

All-Purpose Cleaner 

This cleaner is easy, smells good and gets the job done. You can use it on almost all surfaces, except for granite.  

There are just 4 Ingredients: 

• White Vinegar 
• Water 
• Lemon zest 
• Rosemary 

Using one–part white vinegar and one–part water to make your desired amount of cleaner, mix these ingredients together and put them in a spray bottle! You can let the mixture sit for a few days to help the scents infuse into the mixture.  

Kitchen Cleaner 

This couldn’t be easier to get together and I always use it to help clean my sink, and my garbage disposal. 

Ingredients 

• 1 quart warm water 
• 4 tbsp baking soda 

The Baking soda helps to clear up stains, especially on stainless steel! Baking soda is a great secret ingredient cleaner. Sometimes just putting some baking soda and warm water down your garbage disposal really helps with the smell. 

Glass Cleaner 

Nothing annoys me more than a streaky mirror or window. This cleaner is definitely better than store-bought cleaner for the environment, and for yourself. 

Ingredients 

• 2 cups of water 

• ½ cup of vinegar (white or cider vinegar works, depending on what you have handy in your pantry) 
• ¼ cup of rubbing alcohol (70% concentration works best) 
• A couple drops of essential oil (I like lemon scented!) 

Just combine these ingredients and put them in a spray bottle, spray the solution on a soft cloth or paper towel and wipe away. 

Natural Marble Cleaner 

Ingredients 

• Mild Dish-washing liquid (I use Dawn) 
• Warm Water 

Mix these ingredients together, and using a sponge wipe all over the countertops. Dry off the countertops with a soft cloth or paper towel. 

Silver Cleaner 

This is a trick my mom taught me and it works great every time! I always use it on my jewelry to help get rid of the tarnish and get the shine back. 

Ingredients 

• Toothpaste! 

All you need is toothpaste and an old toothbrush, lay out your silver jewelry and use an old toothbrush with the toothpaste on it to brush away any tarnish. Once you’ve done that, simply rinse the jewelry in the sink and it’ll be shiny and new!