Do Your Part: Slash Your Grocery Bill while Going Green

By Terri Bennett

RISMEDIA, We’re all looking for ways to cut down on our bills. Grocery shopping is a necessity, but there are ways to lower your costs each week while also lowering your eco-footprint. Here are my top five ways to do your part for both the planet and your pocketbook.

No. 1: Stock Up On Green Cleaners
When you create a green cleaning kit with baking soda, white vinegar, Borax, and hydrogen peroxide, you have all you need to clean everything in your home. Plus, this cleaning kit is just a fraction of the cost of store-bought household cleaners. For instance, a 76-ounce box of Borax can produce 19 gallons of mold and mildew cleaner. You would need to buy more than a 150 16-ounce bottles of store bought cleaners to produce the same amount.

No. 2: Do The Prep Work Yourself
A few extra minutes in the kitchen really can save you a few bucks each week. If your family eats a lot chicken, buying the chicken whole or with the skin on will bring immediate savings. Boneless and skinless chicken breasts cost about $4.99 a pound; compare that to chicken sold with bone and skin that’s priced around $1.99 a pound, and you can clearly see the amount you will be saving. You could use the saved money to buy organic chicken, and feel good about serving your family a healthier piece of poultry. Also, instead of buying fruits and veggies that have been cut and peeled for you, do the work yourself and pay half the price.

No. 3: Buy in Bulk
You know those individually packaged crackers, cookies and snacks? You’ll probably want to ban them from your home after learning the true cost of convenience. Plus, the packaging on those small items is usually tough to recycle. Your best bet is to go big when it makes sense. My family loves those popular cheese crackers. A big box of them costs $3.79, or $0.28 an ounce. If you get them in the individual size, it costs $0.40 per ounce! That’s a $0.12 savings on every ounce. Instead, put the crackers from the large box into a small reusable container that your child can bring to school.

No. 4: Shop in Season
Shopping in season for produce is smart for you, your pocketbook, and the planet. When you buy foods at their peak, they aren’t being shipped around the world to arrive at your grocery store. That means they’re usually much more affordable than at other times of the year.

No. 5: Do What Grandma Did
When you spot organic fruits and veggies on sale—buy up! Then, you can do what our grandmothers did by preserving them. Whether you freeze, can, or dehydrate your foods—you’ll have the next best thing to fresh, organic produce for a time when you’ll want them and they are no longer in season.

Terri Bennett is a veteran TV meteorologist, syndicated columnist, and host of DoYourPart.com.

For more information visit www.doyourpart.com.