349: How to Live More Sustainably and Avoid Food Waste as a Food Blogger with Marley Goldin

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by our friends. I've said this before, but they are literally my friends. Like, I get breakfast with Bruno, one of the co founders, and we go on walks and we talk about business.

And blogging, and we actually talked about.

Influence Kit in the early days, which is why I'm so excited and honored that they're supporting the podcast.

That's right.

This podcast is sponsored by Influence Kit.

So question for you.

Have you ever thought about how you can stand out to a sponsor or a brand and encourage them to work with you again? Time and time, over and over again and again. That's kind of the dream, right? You get a brand, you really like, the partnership that you have with them, maybe the team's really nice. Maybe they're not asking you to do 1000 revisions. How do you do that? Well, we know that it's all about.

Creating really good content, right?

Good photos, good recipes, if you're doing a recipe post, compelling video. But the thing that really speaks numbers to brands is numbers, right? And the way that you show that is through campaign reports. And way back in the day, Pinch of Yam would create these reports, but we do it with a PDF. We'd copy and paste. We'd go and find the data, we'd bring it in, we'd paste it in, we'd send it over. In the minute that you send that over, it's going to be outdated, right? You're going to be sending over numbers that aren't as good as what they are in real time. But Influence Kit not only makes it really easy to give your sponsor an overview of the content's performance, but it does it in just a few clicks and it keeps it updated in real time. So you can easily create reports about blog and social media, post performance, engagement and reach. And the reports, they're these living documents. So they use something called the API. They hook into this different social platforms, and they bring all of that in in real time. And it gets updated after you send it over to the brand. It could be days later, months later, or even years later. So it's super easy to use. And there's a really big kind of value unlock with it in that a brand is always going to be able to see, or an agency, if you're working with agencies, they're always going to be able to see how that post is performing. And the value that you're offering is reflected in real time. It's a great tool. We use it. And the awesome thing is that you can actually try it out for free so you can get a full fledged report, a fully functioning report. It's not some like half baked version of it. It's just the actual report that you can send to brands and actually use. By going to Kit News, which Kit New and that will allow you to create a free report, you can see how it works. You can see what it looks like to send that to a brand or an agency that you're working with. And it's actually something that we do for Pinch of Yum and we really love it and it's an important part of our process.

Which why is why like so easy to do this podcast ad? Because it's something that we love and.

And we know that they do good work and know that there's thousands of creators and influencers who are using it right now. So again, you can go to Kit.

New.

To make your own Influence Kit.

Report, try it out for free, get.

A feel for how it works and you can see why it's valuable and how it's really a level up over.

A spreadsheet or a PDF.

And excited to tell you about it. Cause I think it'll help you with your business and and also excited to partner with Influence Kit to sponsor this episode. Thanks to everybody over at Influence Kit. Appreciate you guys and what you're up to. Let's go ahead and jump into this episode. Hello. Hello, this is the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Bjork Ostrom and you are here, I'm guessing, because you want to learn about all things blogging business. Maybe you're a food creator, maybe your brand. And we try and cover all the different angles that you can look at when you are thinking about building a business in the food space, especially an online business. And one of those angles today that we're going to be talking about is this idea of really thinking strategically about sustainability, specifically sustainability around food and food waste. We produce a lot of food in this world that we are in and we need to think strategically about it. And a lot of times we talk about numbers, we talk about growth, we talk about traffic, social media, followers, whatever it might be. But it's also important for us to talk about impact and the impact that our businesses have on the world and the communities around us. And that conversation is going to be one that we were having today with Marley golden from Marley's Menu. She is an expert in this area. She writes a lot of content around this and she also has a formal background in health science and master's in healthcare management. So she's going to talk about some of the things that she's learned along the way. Some tips for creators on how you can reduce food waste. Even questions like, man, if you have a lot of food, what do you do with it? How do you, how do you make sure that it doesn't go to waste and you just dump it out? If you've been trying, you know, a hundred cupcakes and don't want to eat 100 more cupcakes, it's going to be a fun conversation and really excited to share it with you. But before we do, I wanted to promo our group foodbloggerpro.com Facebook it's a free group that you can join that's focused on the podcast audience here. So make sure to go to foodbloggerpro.com Facebook you can join in the conversation in a way that we can't on.

A podcast because it's a podcast.

So would love for you to check that out again. Foodbloggerpro.com Facebook that will redirect you to the page where you can apply to join and once you do, we'll do a quick review of your account and then probably not always, but we'll probably let you in. Then you can join in the conversations all around the podcast. Upcoming interviews we're doing if you have any specific questions for folks and sometimes we do some follow up back and forth questions and answers for people who are on the podcast. So again that's foodbloggerpro.com Facebook that will redirect you to the right place to apply for that. But for now let's jump into this interview with Marlee Marley. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, we're going to focus in on something that I actually here's my story around sustainability. I'll start it off with a short story. I had what I felt like was a genius discovery last night. It's the most basic of basics but it's a start where I was my one of my roles within our family. We have two little girls is like Lindsay will take them up and they'll do bath and then I'll like clean up the kitchen. And Lena, our youngest, who's a little over one has her little like milk sippy cup and usually I would just like take that over and like dump it out and clean it up and then she would do like one more milk like a bottle. I was like wait a minute, I'm not going to dump this out. I'm going to put this in the fridge. And then like in an hour or two when she does that bottle, I'm just going to take it out again and use it. And it was like it was the most basic of basic. But I feel like there's a hundred different things like that in the world of food sustainability that exists that we don't even think about. So what I'm curious to know after I tell my short story, would love to hear your story around how did you get interested in this and passionate about it? And then we'll talk about kind of some tips and tricks, but also what that looks like for you to fold that into your blog. So curious to hear your story.

So as long as I can remember, I've always really loved the environment and being outside in nature and, you know, just a funny little anecdote. When I was about from ages 10 to 15, I went to sleepaway camp and we all had like a roll call where they would say our name and we'd say just a one liner just to respond. And mine was always, every year, don't waste water. Because my friends always made fun of me that I would go behind them and turn off the sink while they were brushing. Yeah, yeah.

So I feel like I am that person for lights where I'm like, hey, if it's like, if we're not in the room, we got to turn the light off. Otherwise there's just like no value in it. Yeah, yeah.

So I just think that I just have had always had this innate passion and excitement around sustainability. And that kind of led me to pursue my degree in environmental health science. And I was just armed with all this knowledge about sustainability and the environment that I wasn't using in any of my previous jobs. So when I became my own boss and I started this food blogging journey, I was like, I have to integrate this somehow. This is such a huge part of my life and part of me that I have to figure out how to kind of integrate it. And that's when I really started researching more about food in the environment, which is a whole huge subject that we weren't even really taught in school. And then I just started really digging into food waste, which is like a huge issue right now. And it's something we have a lot of control over in our homes. And that's when I started kind of trickling in little what I call green tips, which are within each of my recipes. I like to put a skim stopper that is a green tip. And it will talk about maybe you make your own Sauce to avoid getting extra plastic. Maybe you will look for organic produce. Maybe you will shop seasonally. Maybe you'll take something that you have to use up from your fridge and add it to this recipe. And so with every recipe, I started putting in the little green tips to kind of help people understand and even think about sustainability while they're cooking. And then that kind of turned into writing more standalone sustainability articles that I have on the site and just, you know, becoming more of a resource to people when it comes to food and sustainability. And that's where I am now.

Yeah, that's cool.

Can you.

A couple things that you had mentioned that were interesting. What is a skim stopper? You'd mentioned a skim.

Yeah, yeah. So a skim stopper will be something within your post that you want to make stand out that, you know, when someone's skimming through your post, it will either be bold or in a different color or in a different font that will cause them to stop and take a look at it. And even if they don't read anything else within your blog post, you, they're more likely to read that. So what's that main point you want to get across within your blog? It doesn't have to be a green tip. Can be, oh, pro tip. If you're making this this way, you should use this particular technique or product. It doesn't have to be a green tip. It can be anything that you want the reader to take away and it will also end up making them spend more time on your page. So it's actually really a smart tactic, not just to get your point across, but also from a business standpoint. It's a smart tactic.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. There's something about the way that you structure a blog post which is different than, you know, a book or a newspaper article where the way people consume content on the web is much different. And the idea of different, putting in this green tip so somebody skimming and it stops them is a great way not only to call out important information for you, that being, you know, sustainability related tips and advice, but it's also a great way to structure your content because that's how people consume it. They look at headlines, one sentence here, a list here, a little call out. And the example that I pulled up here was on a caramelized onions and mushrooms post and you said organic farms rely on biodiversity to generate rich soil, avoiding the use of pesticides and fertilizers, which means no toxic runoff. Consider organic mushroom, onions and mushrooms for this recipe. So it's a little tip. It's like, hey, here's why organic is important. I think a lot of times people are like, wait, like why would I. What's the reason why I buy organic? Well, here's why, like, this is an important thing. You're not going to have pesticides and fertilizers. It's more of, you know, this intentional use of rich soil to get good results from, from the things that they are, that they're growing. So have you found that for your site that are people coming to you because they know, like, are they aligning with you because they are sustainability minded people? Or do you feel kind of what you're doing is like sustainability evangelism in the way that somebody might come across a recipe and you might be like, hey, here's this important thing that you should know. How do you view that in terms of the content that you're creating? More like influence and impact on new people who aren't sustainability minded or additional content for people who already are sustainability minded? Right.

I'm so glad you brought that up because when I was trying to figure out how to integrate this into my blog, I was really concentrating on what's missing from the industry. And I feel like there are so many great people who do such great sustainability things already, whether it be in food blogging or lifestyle blogging. And I think that what's missing is for those people who have no concepts of sustainability, it's not a part of their lifestyle at all. A lot of those things can be really intimidating and kind of like guilt inducing. And I think that for me, I wanted to kind of cast a wider net and be more of like a gateway into people who know nothing and still, you know, they're not ready to, you know, give up their modern lifestyle or gourmet palettes just to, you know, be more sustainable. But instead I wanted to be that person who could say, listen, we could all do better, but let's start here. Let's start here. Let's not overlook the small things you can do just because you can't be perfect all the time. A big part of what I constantly say and do is saying small changes over time can make a big impact. Don't be discouraged by the fact that you can't be perfect because you're not ready to go completely zero waste, plastic free, completely vegan. All these things that you know are great goals but maybe aren't for everyone. So you'll see me say a lot and hear me say a lot, attainable sustainable. Because I really want people to understand that the small changes do have an impact as well.

Yeah, that's great. It's almost like people who are sustainable, curious, right? Like, they talk about sober curious, where it's like, I'm going to experiment with not drinking. It's people who are like, I feel like I want to do better at this, but I'm not. I don't have, like, super strong opinions on it or, you know, zero waste kind of situation. It's like, hey, I just don't want to use as many plastic bags. Like, how do you do that? So with that as an example, knowing that the people who are listening to this podcast are probably producing more food than normal because not only are they producing it for themselves and for their family, but also a lot of times probably doing multiple rounds of testing, sometimes it doesn't work out. How do you start to step into this and to reach attainable sustainable, while also knowing that you're producing more food than maybe most folks would?

Right, right. So I think, for one thing, something that I do and that a lot of people could be doing is testing in smaller batches, whether it be baking or cooking. If it's something that you're trying out for the first time and you're not completely confident it's going to come out perfectly, start with a smaller batch. For one, you're going to end up wasting less ingredients and wasting less final product. But for two, you're also gaining knowledge about your recipe and, you know, giving yourself more to write about in the blog post. Listen, you can have this recipe. You can third, this recipe, it's tested and tried. It's true. It's. It's good this way, too. So I think starting with this, testing in smaller batches is a really great way to avoid a lot of extra food waste.

Yeah. And how much, like, let's say it's baking, how much would you run into a situation where, hey, you're going to do a half or a quarter batch of something, do you run into, like, then when you scale it up, it doesn't actually do what you want it to do? You know, I'm speaking outside of my expertise because I'm not the one doing the recipe testing.

But yeah, no, it's harder with baking because a lot of times, like, if you're using an egg, it's hard to have half an egg. Usually scaling up is easy. It's the scaling down and testing smaller batches that's harder. But I will say, like, especially with, like a cookie if you're testing it in a smaller batch and maybe it spreads too much, it's. It's usually still edible. You may be not ready to put that on your blog because no one wants a huge cookie that's spread and completely flat. But it might be really good edible plate for your ice cream. You want to make sure you're doing things that are still going to be. Not directly for the trash can still be something you share with your neighbor and say, hey, this is my first test. They're a little thinner than I want them to come out, but they're still delicious. So thinking about those things. And also, like I said, it's hard sometimes with baking, but usually with baking things are still edible. They may not be perfect, but you can still consume them and freeze them and consume. Consume at a later date.

Sure, yeah. So idea being, maybe it's not the perfect outcome, but it's still something you could take and say, like, hey, I'm going to keep this. I'm not just going to toss it, freeze it, come back to it later. I'd be curious to know, you know, I think just in general, this idea of waste less is good, but what is the why behind it? Like, what is in doing this, what are we actually doing?

Right.

Part of it is like, you're spending less. Great financial decision. Part of it is like, you have this thing, you might as well give it to other people. You're maybe not putting it into a landfill, but it's disposable, so that's not. Or it'll compost. What is the reason behind it? For people who would maybe be curious.

Around that, I think it's twofold. For one, the food industry has a huge impact on the environment. 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the food industry. It's a huge amount. A quarter of our annual freshwater consumption goes to the food industry, whether it be to make new crops or for animal feed, things like that. And it contributes to air, water, soil, noise, pollution. And for all of that damage that's happening to the environment, for 40% of food to go to waste, it's just really detrimental. Also, what you said about it's organic, it will compost. Actually, when food is diverted to a landfill, it doesn't have the oxygen it needs to break down organically. So instead of breaking down, it doesn't. So it instead breaks down into methane and water. And what happens to that water is it sinks to the bottom of the landfill. It mixes with other pollutants that are in the landfill. And it can leak out in something that's called leachate. So not only are you not consuming the food that has put so much stress on the environment, but you're diverting it to a place where it can't break down organically. So that's the first reason. The second reason I think we can all kind of understand and get behind is that it's ethically wrong. There's one, you know, one in nine people are hungry or malnourished, and it's not because there's a lack of food. It's because the higher demand for food in the west is actually driving up prices for food in other areas. And we're, you know, taking food away essentially from places that need it to come to places that will inevitably waste it. And so for those two main reasons, I think that food waste is just a bigger issue than an environmental issue. It's like a humanitarian issue as well.

Yeah. It's almost like when you look at the supply and demand side, if we can accurately reduce the demand by correcting the actual amount of food that's needed. So let's say the actual amount of food that's needed is maybe 60% of what we're actually consuming, because I don't. I don't know, we're throwing out.

Did you.

Do, you know, like, on average, how much food would we throw out in.

The U.S. in the U.S. it's 40%.

40%. Okay, interesting. So 60% of food we're actually consuming, 40% we're throwing out. Which even when I think about our own behavior, it's like, oh, this is expired. Toss it. Like, if demand goes down, then that's going to impact pricing. Impact pricing, from what I hear you saying, is that could then be global in terms of making food more affordable on a global basis. How about on that consumption side? What is your mindset around purchasing in a way where there's macro supply and demand, but then there's household supply and demand? And how do you get your 60% of actual consumption closer to 95% actual consumption without just, like, eating more than you need to in order to consume the food? Like, how do you. How do you. How do you do better at that?

It's hard, and it's something that I struggle with personally, but it's. It's really all about planning. It's all about planning and understanding, looking, sitting down before you go to the store instead of just throwing things into your cart. Looking at. Especially as a food blogger, what recipes do I want to develop this week and Then it's actually even smart from business standpoint because you think about, okay, this week I'm going to make a chimichurri recipe. And then once I make the chimichurri recipe, I am going to test XYZ recipes that actually use the actual chimichurri in those recipes. And so every single Sunday, what I personally do is I sit down and I think about, okay, what am I going to work on this week? What do I actually need to buy? What do I already have in my fridge? What are the quantities? Then I don't assume that I'm going to mess up. I do travel back to the grocery store if I need to retest something. Then even if you don't want to post all of those recipes sequentially, you can have them in your repertoire to post later. What that means is you're also creating a cluster, a topic cluster around your own content that actually helps with internal linking. It helps with your eat on Google. So it's a smart business decision. And a happy byproduct of that is that you're not going to end up wasting as much produce, you're not going to end up wasting as much ingredients that you either already have in your pantry and you've assessed and you took stock of that, or you just didn't buy unnecessarily.

Yeah. Can you talk more about that idea of clustering and internal linking? Eat. I think a lot of people would hear you say that and be like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Can you double click on that and explain a little bit more?

Yeah. So for me, it's been a total game changer for my blog. It's just helped with my Google ranking so much because what I've done is I've really planned around what we're calling a topic cluster. So just in that recipe alone, I, I've made that example alone, I've made a chimichurri recipe and now I have three other recipes to link to, naturally, that the reader will actually probably be interested in. Right. Because I know they're searching for a chimichurri recipe, they've made their chimichurri, what are they going to put it on? And that goes for the other way too. So once I've made the recipe that includes the chimichurri, I'm just, I'm not going to put in my recipe card how to make that chimichurri, because you can buy it, you can decide to buy it or hey, as linked to my chimichurri recipe in case you want to make it at home instead. So it's a very organic way to link between your posts. And it also shows Google. We'll talk about Google as a person, right?

Sure.

Who. It shows Google that you have in depth knowledge on this on Chimichurri because you have three recipes on it and you have a standalone recipe that they're all linking back to. So I. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, and the idea with that, I'm curious to hear the tie back to sustainability with that is like, hey, if you have, if you're going out and you're purchasing ingredients in a certain category, you can create other types of recipes within that. That kind of being a topic cluster. Is that, am I getting at that what you're saying?

Exactly. Right.

Yes, got it.

Yes.

And point being, for those who aren't familiar, there's, you know, kind of this SEO best practice around. Hey, if you're going to start. Real broad example, if you're going to start a website, one thing you could do, like let's say you were me and you're going to start a website, you could do things that I'm interested in. Like, I could say like Bjorksite and I could have like one day I could post about ping pong and then the next day I could post about coffee and then the next day I could post about tech. Like, that's not a great idea. And because it's all these random things, as you get more focused, the more beneficial it is because then Google can see like, hey, this is like a tech site. But even within that, what you're saying, what I hear you saying is you can have kind of clusters of content and you can be viewed as an authority around that kind of cluster people would talk about. These are what all be search terms that people could use if you want to learn more about it. So topic cluster, hub and spoke would be another example. So one of the ways we're thinking about this with Food Blogger Pro is like, hey, how do we have a hub and spoke topic cluster around food photography or food videography? And you can get those on a more micro level, which I hear you saying, which would be more like ingredient based. Or hey, you have more specific examples of like these chimichurri recipes that you're doing. How, how broad do you view those for you and your site? Like even within, you know, your sidebar here, I see you have, these would be broader ones, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, you can kind of click into those and dwindle it down and say like hey, breakfast vegan, for instance, do you have kind of a general thought around how you view your content and organize it, and even does that impact then how you go out and shop for those ingredients to bring it back to the sustainability part?

Yes, absolutely. So I just think it's a more natural way for your user to click through your content personally, because I think that if you've grabbed someone on a particular recipe, you already know they have interest in that. So you already know that you're not just doing random links because you're supposed to because of, you know, whatever Yoast is telling you, you're doing it because it's an actual aid to your user. And on that note, it's also encouraging your user not to waste ingredients. Because if I'm making a raspberry tart and I call for, you know, 4 ounces of raspberries, but grocery stores sell them in 8 ounces, then your user's left with 4 ounces of raspberries that are going to sit in their fridge, unless, you know, maybe they'll snack on them on their own, but also, you know, unless you direct them to another place to use up those raspberries. So not only are you actually giving them an option to use the ingredients, but you're actually, you know, putting a little bug in their ear saying, oh, you know what? I'm going to make something else with this. And you're encouraging your reader not to waste. So not only are you helping your own self, you know, organize your content, but you're really digging into what the user needs because you already know they have those raspberries in their fridge because they only used half of it for your other recipe. So I think no matter how you look at it, it's a really good practice. And at the end of the day, you're not going to waste as much, your user's not going to waste as much, and you're really putting an effort into using every bit of that ingredient that you had them go out and buy. And I'm so passionate about this because we're in people's kitchens, we have an opportunity to really help them understand without even having to understand the science and the heaviness behind food waste. You're helping them understand that, yeah, you're buying this ingredient. Let's use it thoroughly. Let's use it all up. And that's just so important to me. And I feel like it should be important to everyone because it's helpful on the sustainability side, but it's also helpful for you as someone who's in people's kitchens. You're helping them. You're helping them.

Yeah, yeah. Point being that we're as creators and people with a voice in a unique position in that we can help people understand how to do this better. Exactly. It could be a little call out in a note. It could be, you know, a little piece of advice that you have, a skim stopper, whatever it might be. I'd be curious to know what are the ones that you've shared that have been most impactful, that really resonate with people where it's like, oh, I don't have to throw the milk out when I give it to my one year old at the table. Like, that's my tip. Right. So, like, put it in the fridge.

Yeah.

Ones that you're. That you've shared where people are like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's a. That's. That's great. Um, and maybe what we'll do. Here's. Here's the game that we'll play. Yeah, we'll go every other. So I'm not as good at this, but I have some random ones that I'm sure that I'll be able to think of.

Okay.

And we can go back and forth on like our own. These are like our podcast skin stoppers, like the things that people can be doing or these are the things that people either personally could be doing or sharing with their audience around, like, sustainable green best practices. So I don't know how long this will go. We'll see. I probably have like three, but you can go all. You can go first.

Okay. So I always recommend to buy or look at your butter. A lot of people use, you know, the tub butters, which a lot of times can have palm oil in it. Palm oil is a huge contributor to deforestation. So I would say make sure your butter is pure butter and doesn't have extra palm oil in it, which is unnecessary.

Oh, interesting. So here's mine. I'm going to. I have to go broader. I can't do just food, but I'll go with sustainability. I'll go. And as always happens, it'll somehow come back to tech for some of these, at least my first few ones. So you talked about wasting water. One of the devices that we installed, I installed one for my parents, for us is called Flume F L U M E. And what it does is it hooks up to your main water, like where your water comes in, in your house, and it reads how much water you use. And so not only can you see how much water you use. But it's also really helpful because it lets you know if there's a leak. And I would say, especially in the summer, like if we're outside and, you know, using the hose or something, I would say, like, once a month there's some random leak. And this will notify me of either excessive water use or leaks. So it's an awesome device. It's called Flume.

Awesome.

Yeah. So that's mine. Do you have one?

Okay, yeah. How about to look for Utz or Rainforest alliance certifications? If you're looking for more sustainable brands, those are trusted resources that you can actually look for those labels on different brands when you're shopping and in the food store.

What is the. What is that?

Ut, Utz certification or Rainforest Alliance? You'll see it on coffee, you'll see it on chocolate, you'll see it on all kinds of different food products. And it's a label that you can look for easily to identify that it's, you know, a brand that has sustainability front of mind.

Cool, that's great. And we'll link to that in the show notes if people want to see what that looks like. Uh, here's mine. Easy one. But I'd be interested after I say this if you have additional thoughts around it. We still, like when we go to the grocery store, I would say, like, sometimes we use a bag that we take, but other times we'll like, just have the plastic or the paper switching over to just having your own bag. I'd be interested if you have advice on how to do that better because it. As easy as it is, it also feels like kind of a hard thing to do in terms of remembering to bring it. And then the sub question to that is, in your opinion is like, is paper better than plastic when you're loading up? Because I've heard people have different opinions on that.

Yes. And this is kind of going to spark me into something else about recycling in general. But yes, best practice for switching over to those bags is to just keep them in your car. So once you unload your groceries, and this is if you drive to the grocery store, if you walk, then keep them by the front door, but keep them in your car. So what I do is I unload the groceries and then I immediately just put it back in my trunk because I will always forget. I will always forget. So I know I have to keep them in the car. In terms of paper versus plastic, yes, paper bags are recyclable. The plastic bags are not. Even though you may think they are, you can bring them back to. Most grocery stores will actually allow you to bring the plastic bags back. They either have a place outside you can put them, or you can bring them into, you know, the checkout line and bring them back.

Are those actually being recycled? I've heard different opinions on, like, what that actually looks like once that leaves the grocery store or wherever it is that you're dropping those off. And it seems like soft plastics like that, it's hard to successfully repurpose and recycle those. Do you know anything about that or.

Yeah, it is. It is. You know, only 9% of plastics get recycled despite our best efforts.

And that's because otherwise they just end up in a landfill.

And a lot of them are meant for single use. They're really produced, not to be recycled. And even when you are recycling them, we're talking about plastics, not glass and not aluminum. But when you recycle plastics, they actually have to put more plastic into it. It's not 100% recyclable. So, like, it doesn't. It's not a bottle, and then they reprocess it, and it's a bottle again. It's a bottle, they reprocess it, add more plastic into it, and then it's a bottle again.

Sure.

So, you know, we're constantly creating more plastic. And that would lead to. My next tip is make sure you are recycling correctly. I'm doing air quotes only you can see me. But the reason I'm doing that is because the recycling laws are different county to county, state to state. I just moved two weeks ago from Florida to Georgia, and here I'm finding out I can't recycle glass with my plastic. I'm going to have to figure out a different system for that. But it's not just, oh, this has a recyclable symbol on it. I can chuck it in my recycling. Make sure you understand in your specific location what is recyclable and what's not. Because if you're recycling things that are not actually recyclable in. In your county, you're actually doing more harm. There's a term for it called wish cycling, and it means you're putting things into the recycling that aren't recyclable. And that's actually.

You feel better by putting in the recycling, but then it just. It's like only you feeling better just still goes in the landfill.

It does. And it costs those recycling plants time, effort and money to actually sort through. And sometimes they don't have the capacity to do that. And if there's an area of recycling that they see is contaminated with things that can't be recycled, that all of that goes to the landfill. So you really have to make sure you understand where you are, what can be recycled and what cannot. And usually your county website will have a very, you know, like, in depth description of what you can and can't recycle.

Yep. The. It's a little bit of a bummer, but one of the things that you had talked about that fixes this problem is the idea of just not consuming plastic as much. And you had said making your own sauces as opposed to getting like purchasing them. Is that essentially what you're getting after with that? Like. Yeah, apply to like everything. Ketchup, mustard, like making your own sauces. Yeah, yeah.

Simple syrup. Anything that you'll buy that will come in something that's plastic or if you don't, if you don't have the capacity to. Or you just don't have the time to make your own, look for sauces that are jarred in glass because glass is 100% recyclable. And cans, cans are 100% recyclable. So maybe just steer away from the plastic.

Sure. It's interesting. In the Philippines, we lived there for a year. And one of the things that they would do is you'd have glass bottles or Coke or whatever, beers. But then they would reuse those glass bottles. It wouldn't be just like recycle them. It would just be like, hey, clean them out, reuse them. So you'd see that they'd have like marks on them and stuff. But just interesting. I feel like from a sustainability standpoint, developing country, doing better, which is kind of cool to see. All I'm running out, I'm already running out of sustainability tips. But one of the things that I've loved. This isn't food related, but one of the things that I've loved is we have. It's more of a tech tip. That's just what I do. So I roll. We have our phone set to be aware of when we come and leave. And so in terms of heating and cooling our houses or the office, like when I pull up to the office, I'll get up, it'll start to heat. But it's because we have a nest thermostat and super helpful. Yeah, it's just such great, simple tech. Um, but to set that to in a way, temperature and it will even tell you it'll be show like a little leaf where if you get into a category that is, I think, sustainable in their eyes or environmentally friendly, I don't know what the leaf actually stands for, but it says eco. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yep. Um, but that's been super helpful so I don't have to think like, hey, turn the heat off, turn the heat on. You know, today it's super cold in Minnesota, and so, you know, to heat, it's really expensive. But if we're not somewhere, it doesn't make sense to have that. To have that stay on. So that's one of my end. Do you have an additional one? These are, like, all of your green tips from your.

I'm going to try to divert away from all the food ones because you can get those all on my site. But outside of food, something that we waste a lot and we go through a lot is clothes. So maybe instead of, you know, fast fashion, really trying to get things that are super trendy that you might only wear twice and then might go in the trash, maybe think about your closet as maybe investing a little more in a more sustainable fabric and having that for a long time and having these, like, pieces that you can wear forever instead of just going through things that you'll inevitably throw out. And of course, donate things. Always donate things instead of just tossing them.

Yeah.

Do you have.

We do Goodwill a lot. We have one close by. Do you have recommendations on where the best place to bring those would be? And the other question that I have along with that is this is just like a consultation now for me. Have you have a piece of clothing, for instance, or clothing. We'll stick with that. That you're like, this wouldn't really make sense to donate it. I wear it. But it would probably be insulting to be like, hey, somebody else should wear this. A lot of my clothes are in that category. Are there ways that you can still recycle clothes or donate those in a way where you're not just, like, throwing it in the garbage?

There are. There are different, like, websites and things that will take them and repurpose them. But I think going back to your first question, where should I bring them? It's just anywhere that's convenient for you. Don't let, you know the, you know, the excuse of that one's too far away, that wherever we'll take your clothes, bring them there. And, you know, I guess I just had fallen victim to wanting to be trendy in my college years, and I ended up wasting so much clothes, and I hate that. But I think just it's Never too late. Like, never think, oh, my closet's a mess. I'm just gonna not do it. You can always just move forward, doing what you think is a more conscious. Making a more conscious decision. And you can donate what you have and start from scratch, or you can, you know, just add little pieces here and there that you think will be a more sustainable purchase for you. So I think it's all around mindset, like, yeah, let's. Let's donate these things where it's convenient for me. I've done that. Let's, moving forward, make more responsible decisions. And for me, like, the ratty shirts that you don't feel comfortable donating, like, I keep them somewhere for when I'm painting or doing art or, you know, like, those become my, like, yard work. Yeah, exactly. And those are all examples of like. And like you said with the glass bottles, those are examples of upcycling. And that's a really great way you can be sustainable is, you know, if I end up getting takeout and they give me those plastic takeout sink. Yeah. I get frustrated, but then I'm like, you know what? This is great. I'm going to store all my phone chargers and things like that in here and use it as an organization thing. So just think about things before they go into the landfill, Think about if there's a use for you, for them. Not suggesting you become a hoarder, but I am saying that there's always ways to upcycle things, and there's always different uses for things. And just being mindful about that can really make a difference.

That's great. Uh, I wish I remembered the name of it, but one of the things I was going to mention is Lindsay has a subscription to the service where it's like, clothes, like rental. Like, they'll send rent to Runway probably. Yeah, Yeah. I don't. I don't know if it's that one or what it is, but it's just like day to day stuff.

I don't know if Rent the Runway.

Is like, oh, it's more formal. Yeah, I don't know. But. But it's. It's been great because then you can have stuff for a season and then you send it back and it's, you know, for Lindsay, she thinks a lot about that. Um, this will be another tip that I'm stealing from Lindsay, but she has a. She's a part of a group. And I don't know if this is like an app within Facebook or if it's just different community groups, but shoot. I'M not gonna remember the name of it. We can link to it in the show notes. But it's like. But, oh, it's Buy Nothing group.

Yes.

Do you know does that work?

Yes, I use them all the time. It's great. So it's basically they have it on Facebook and you can search by nothing and then your town or wherever you are. And then it's basically you post stuff on there that you don't want anymore. And you can either meet someone somewhere to give it, or you can have them come pick it up from your house. And you know, it just goes back to, one man's trash is another man's treasure. It's really, really useful for baby things. I found, like, I have so much baby stuff that Charlie doesn't use anymore that I would love someone else to have their lightly used. And I've found that even when we just moved recently, we got all of our moving boxes from Buy Nothing. Yeah. And we paid it forward. And people were so grateful to not have to buy those moving boxes.

We had our daughter Solvi's super into Paw patrol. She's like memorizing the order of the paw patrol when they show up. And like, so my mom got her paw patrol socks, but they don't have the, like, grippers on them and our floors are super slippery. So anyways, I bought new paw patrol socks, but Lindsay most recently put them on Buy Nothing and somebody's like, yeah, awesome Paw patrol socks. Or like, we had birthday balloons and they had been through like 10 different families. They were like the big number birthday balloons. But it's like you use them once and usually you would just throw them out. But it's like, hey, if somebody else is having a birthday party for their kid who's turning two in a week. And so there was this like long train of people who would use these birthday party balloons. So.

Right.

It's a great resource.

I love that.

To your point. Upcycle. So I'd be curious as we close out here to come back to your blog to talk a little bit about that. When you envision the future of that, do you envision that becoming sustainability? Becoming more of what you do and more of your focus and how much of that for you looking forward to saying, like, hey, this is kind of like how much of it for you is a business decision versus an impact decision? And it almost seems like this category of there's a business category called B Corp, which is like, hey, you're a for profit company, but you kind of have a double bottom Line in that like you want to be successful from a growth and revenue perspective, but you also want to have an impact. You know, I think Etsy is a B corp, Tom's Shoes is a B corp. It seems like the type of work that you're doing is kind of in line with that where you have a site, you want to run, a successful site, you want it to be career and revenue producing, career advancing, but also to make an impact. So when you think of what you're doing in your day to day, how does that all align in your mind and where do you envision it going forward?

Yeah, I think now that I have a good foundation of recipes and articles on my site, I feel freer to kind of do what drives me and what I'm passionate about. And that of course, course is sustainability and that of course is food. So I think moving forward, now that I have laid that good foundation, I think I'm going to focus more on maybe bringing to my readers new ways outside of food to be more sustainable. And I think I'm going to kind of gauge the interest there before I go full hog head first into that. But I think I really want to be more of a resource to people who are sustainability curious and who just don't even know where to start in all aspects of sustainability. So I think I've found success in filtering it into my recipes and now I really want to figure out how else can I filter it into people's lives and into their lifestyle and how can I give them information without inducing any guilt or without overwhelming people? So that's kind of where my head is at right now. But I just, I would be remiss if I didn't say that, you know, I recognize that we need bigger changes in terms of sustainability on a higher scale and you know, above what we can do as individuals. But I don't want that to discourage people from making changes. You know, making small changes, it not only, you know, deepens your commitment to sustainability, but there is a trickle effect. Whether you have a blog or you don't, your actions affect the people around you. And if you making a small change impacts someone else and you know, encourages them to make that small change, the, the impact we can have together is infinite. So I think I have to say that yes, I acknowledge that there has to be a bigger change on a larger scale, but also what we do still matters.

I think that's great. Point being like sweeping changes, governmental business, those have huge impacts, right? So like Tesla becoming a popular car, that's Battery versus gas or just EV cars in general, that's going to have a big impact. But also I think one of the truths to that and one of the things I pull from your reflections on that is that doesn't happen unless people are willing to buy EV cars. And the way that that shifts is by individuals making decisions and other individuals being impacted by those decisions. So even though, even like if I were to change in a, in a silo, if I were to change with nobody around me and nobody hearing or being impacted by it, like, great, but globally, probably not going to have a huge impact if I were to change and then I were to share that with my circle of friends podcast listeners, you know, people on my blog that starts to have, to your point, like a ripple effect on the influence and that comes up and individual behaviors change other individual behaviors which change macro behaviors, whether governmental or business. So there's two truths of like, hey, what you're doing as an individual maybe doesn't feel like it has a big impact, but it actually does because the things that you do impact other people, which impacts on a broader, bigger scale. And it's cool to see you being passionate about that, both in saying like, hey, podcast, let's talk about sustainability. Hey, on my blog, let's talk about sustainability when you could be talking about a lot of other things or promoting your own stuff, whatever it might be. So it's really cool to see that and inspiring for those Marley who want to take their in to explore their curiosity around sustainability. You have a lot of resources, you know, continue to publish those. What's the best way for people to do a deep dive into that, to learn a little bit more, follow along with what you're up to, whether on your site or just other areas to explore.

Yeah. So, you know, on my side, I do have a whole section called do our Food Choices Matter? And that really dives really deep into the food industry as it pertains to, to climate change, pollutants, microplastics, food waste, as we've been talking about. There's that that's there for you. I tried to make it not boring and really short and sweet so that you can just get through it quickly and get the information you need. I also have a whole section on composting. So I have an article about advantages of composting, why we should be doing more of that, how to do it, whether it be in your backyard or in a more urban sett. And then I have specific articles on different ingredients and how you can best compost them. And then outside of that, I do always link to resources that I find helpful, whether it be within my actual recipe or within my sustainability articles. I'm always shouting out people I think you should be listening to. So you can find me@marleysmenu.com that's my blog. Or you can find me on Instagram @marliesmenu. I also have a Facebook. I just don't want anyone to hesitate to reach out because I cannot tell you how happy it makes me when someone asks me a question about sustainability. It's never an intrusion or it's never a bother. I'm always happy to answer from my knowledge or even do more research for you. So please, please reach out to me. All of my contact information is on my site. Happy to answer an email or a direct message on Instagram.

Awesome, Marley. Super fun to connect and talk about this. Really appreciate it. And I have some takeaways, some things that I learned even about composting. This is going to be my last quick story. I'll start with the story, end of the story. We, when we lived in St. Paul, there's a local compost and so we put like our compost in a little bin and then like once a week we would take it to like the community drop off site. And there's also an issue in our neighborhood at the time with like random kind of drive by, like robberies, like, you know, people, petty theft kind of stuff. And one day I woke up and our little bin of compost was gone. And I checked our nest camera and somebody, somebody had driven by and they saw this like bucket and I'm sure they thought like, hey, tools or like something expensive and they stole it. They threw it in their car and it was like all of our composted food.

So they've got a really healthy garden.

Yeah, that's maybe that's what it was.

Maybe it was somebody who was just.

Running low on compost and they really needed it. So that was my composting story. But when we moved, we didn't get back into it. So that'll be a good note for me to revisit that. Our system around composting.

And again, as food bloggers and people in the food industry, we consume and produce more food than the average household. So it's something to think about. Just as a food blogger, probably the most people listening to this podcast is think about your responsibility as someone who consumes and produces more food. That might be a good step for you.

That would be our good, a good little green Tip at the end is if you're not to think about composting.

Yeah, absolutely.

Obviously a big impactful thing. So Marlee, thanks for coming on. Really great to connect.

Yes, thank you so much.

Hey there Alexa here from the Food Blogger Pro team. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a quick second to make sure you are aware of the Food Blogger Pro membership. So the Food Blogger Pro membership, Food Blogger Pro in general was started when Bjork and Lindsey Ostrom Lindsay is the content creator over at Pinch of Yum. When they started getting a ton of questions about starting and growing and monetizing food blogs. So people would come to them and say, hey, I see what you're doing, I love what you're doing. How can I do the same thing thing? So they decided Food Blogger Pro to be the place where food bloggers, food content creators can go to learn how to start, grow and monetize their own food blogs. So we have different courses, we have different events, we have different tools and deals for our community. We have a community forum where members can connect, collaborate and troubleshoot with industry experts and their fellow Food Blogger Pro members. And it's just a really active place. I always like to say that your Food Blogger Pro membership won't look the same the next week after you join because we're constantly adding new content, new value to your membership. I wanted to read this testimonial from Food Blogger Pro member Alistair from the Pesky Vegan and he says starting a food blog can feel pretty daunting. More often than not, it's probably something you're trying to do on your own without much prior experience. Signing up to FoodBlogger Pro was one of the single best things I could have done as it removed a lot of the worries I had and provided me with with a supportive community and a wealth of invaluable information. When I think about the journey I've been on, I simply can't imagine getting to where I am without this membership. Thank you. So cool to see so many different experiences with Food Blogger Pro. We have tons of testimonials on our site. If you're interested in learning more, if you're interested in learning more about the membership, what that looks like, what you get when you sign up as a member, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com join you get access to to everything we have the moment you sign up. So no content is dripped. You can kind of just create your own journey through our content and access what is most meaningful and beneficial for you. So again, that URL is foodbloggerpro.com join if you're interested in learning more. Otherwise, we'll see you here on the podcast next week. And until then, make it a great week.

Sam.