How to Reuse Food Scraps in the Kitchen (and on Your Face!)

Banana peels are incredably useful food scraps.

While Earth Day has come and gone that doesn’t mean you are going to stop thinking up new food scrap saving methods. You “make” food waste every day. And while composting food scraps is a fine idea, there are other ways you can give them a second life.

1. Use food scraps in your beauty routine

Banana peels: Cut a small piece of peel and rub it atop acne twice a day to get clearer skin. Banana peels also can whiten teeth. Follow the same formula mentioned previously for results. Banana peels also can provide relief for common skin ailments (warts, bug bites, etc.). They also can be used as a makeshift facemask. Cover your entire face with banana strips for an hour for natural moisture.

Coffee grounds: After your coffee grounds have cooled, you can use them to exfoliate your skin. Coffee grounds also can be used to help calm puffy eyes. Place grounds under your eyes for a few minutes to de-puff the area.

2. Use food scraps to clean the kitchen

If you are cleaning your kitchen and are majorly bummed that your drain does not smell as fresh as the counter you just scrubbed, worry not. Just throw a couple orange or lemon peels in the garbage disposal, pulse, and enjoy the drain’s natural citrusy scent.

If your cutting board is beginning to stink, massage coffee grounds into it to get any residual smell out.

3. Use food scraps in recipes

If you cook with a lot of vegetables, you probably are composting a lot of green scraps. The majority of those food scraps can be used in recipes, though. You can cook with celery leaves, chard stems, broccoli stems, cauliflower leaves, tomato scraps, and the tops of beets and carrots.

Also: If you have some stale bread (or the crusts you cut off of your kids’ sandwiches), make salad croutons.

Plants that can be grown from scraps include the following:

Romaine lettuce
Green onions
Pineapple
Celery

Related on Organic Authority

4 Composting Tips for Apartment-Dwellers

7 Compost-Free Ways To Get Scrap Happy with Produce Trimmings

4 Foods That’ll Re-Grow from Kitchen Scraps

Image: David Goehring

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