Are you planning on making a big feast for the holidays?  Maybe you've been designated as the place to go for dinner festivities.  Before you start the marathon cooking, make sure you read the tips below to ensure that as you enjoy your scrumptious foods, you're also making the smallest dent possible on Mother Nature.

Make It

Don’t wait until you have a pan of leftover oil to dump. Make a designated waste oil container, label it and put it in a place where everyone in your home can easily access it. Photo: Flickr/_e.t

Once you have the ingredients down and your plan in place, saving energy and water is the next major mission.

Dive in and watch the small things add up. For instance, every time you open your oven door to peek inside, your oven’s temperature lowers 25 degrees. It takes both time and energy to get that temperature back up and (not to mention) messes up your cooking process.

• Pots and pans – Use the right size for the right burner and put a lid on it. Both will result in the most efficient use of your heat source, making cooking go faster and energy usage shorter.
• Keep it clean – Burnt spots on your stove can take away from the energy that is getting to your pan. Having a clean cooking surface, along with heavy-bottomed cast iron or cooper cook wear can really help to heat things up.
• Get some gas – According to GreenYour.com, “Gas cooking appliances use less energy than electric stoves because the fuel is delivered directly to the home and used directly for cooking.”
• Use it wisely – An electric oven can be a huge consumer of power so make sure to only pre-heat when really needed (like pizza or cakes), keep that door closed (that’s what that little window is for) and double check that the oven is really the right tool (a toaster oven may do the job).
• Dispose of that disposal – According to Kate Heyhoe, author of Cooking Green, “Garbage disposals waste fuel and water and contribute to carbon footprints. The chewed-up gunk goes to a water treatment plant, then the solids get sifted out and trucked to a landfill. This wastes water, electricity, and fuel for transport, and generates greenhouse gases.” If you can compost your leftovers (read below) then do so for a lighter impact. If not, toss the leftovers from your dishes into the trash.

Clean It

Now that the feast is complete and your belly is full, the dreaded clean up must begin. This portion of  holiday cooking can really make or break the eco-deal. Not only is greening your trash important, but keeping your cleaning supplies and practices up to par is just as important.

Make Your Own Cleaners
Cleaning products get the job done, but at what cost? They can be responsible for around 10 percent of toxic exposures reported to poison control centers and are difficult to dispose of properly. You can most likely find nontoxic alternatives at your grocery store. You can also make your own cleaning product from supplies you probably already have, such as vinegar and baking soda. Try this recipe out for disinfectant spray from NaturalCleaningRecipes.com. Just combine and store in a spray bottle:

• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/4 tsp. tea tree oil
• 1/4 tsp. lavender oil

Think ol’ fashioned

You can purchase paper towels made of recycled content, but they become non-recyclable once you use them to clean the house. However, you can return to the pre-disposable days and use clean towels and sponges until they wear out. This creates less waste and saves you money on supplies.

Remember the broom and the mop? These cleaning classics are still pretty effective for getting your rooms to sparkle, and you don’t need to plug them in or charge batteries to power them.

Recycle

From used cooking oil to packaging and food scraps, recycling should be a major player in your home regardless of the room you’re in. The kitchen just happens to be the hub of most houses and, in turn, can create a lot of materials that can be recycled.

So what’s the holdup? For many people, it is knowing exactly what goes in the recycling bin and what to do with stuff that doesn’t.

1. Check with your local government to get a list of what materials you can and cannot put in your curbside bin.

2. For everything that can’t be put in your curbside bin, check Earth911’s recycling database for drop-off locations near you. This includes those hard-to-get-rid-of items such as paint, batteries, CFLs and pesticides.

Compost

One of the largest contributors to home-based composting piles is kitchen waste. Scraps from meal preparations can be added to a compost bin and contribute to your soil and mulch.

According to the U.S. EPA, each American throws away an average of 1.3 pounds of food scraps daily. In addition to this, yard trimmings and food waste combined make up 24 percent of the nation’s municipal solid waste stream. Even if half of this can be diverted and recycled through composting, our daily trash levels could start to decrease.

**Info and tips provided by Raquel Fagan of Earth911.com**