INTRODUCTION If you''re reading these words, I would venture a guess that you are concerned about what the future holds for both us and this beautiful planet. I am concerned about that too. I''m also going to make a second guess here: At various points in the past, you''ve probably wondered if there was any action you could personally take that would make a dent in climate change. If that''s true, then we also have that in common. I often feel helpless whenever I hear about extreme weather events or read up on climate news. No matter what angle you approach it from, climate change seems like a problem almost too enormous to tackle. Although I want to be informed, I''ve often questioned whether it''s even possible for anyone to inspire meaningful and lasting change in this realm. If it''s not doable, then why bother trying? But then I go outside.

I look up at the towering elms that line the streets in our neighbourhood. Their grand trunks and outstretched arms tell a story of trees that have stood tall for decades. I see wildflowers poking up from our front flower bed, with more shades of pink and purple than you''d think possible for such tiny blooms. The big blue sky extends endlessly above, while the sun shines bright, sharing its warmth. Even in my small corner of the world--on a random day in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan--it''s easy to see that the Earth is astonishing. There''s no denying that nature is exquisite. The tiniest bug or a blade of grass is a wonder in its own right. So despite my feelings of despair, I can''t help but think there must be some way to protect and save it all--the trees, the flowers, the bugs, and beyond.

I simply cannot accept that nothing we do in this realm matters, or that our only option is to lament climate change''s inevitability. I won''t take these notions as reasonable excuses. There has to be more to the story. MY JOURNEY TO BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE KITCHEN For years now, I have felt a gnawing need to do something-- anything --to chip away at the problem that is climate change. Back in 2018, I felt this gnawing more keenly than ever before. That summer, smoke from wildfires near and far seemed unrelenting. I can remember a time when wildfire smoke was essentially non-existent in Saskatoon''s summertime forecast. That now feels like a distant memory.

But in the summer of 2018 in par­ticular, when going outside meant being greeted by a persistent smoky haze, I realized I could no longer ignore the reality that climate change was happening. And if climate change was happening, there was only one thing to do. I had to become more engaged. At the time, living low-waste seemed like the most obvious way to become more engaged in an individual, everyday sense. This solution was plastered everywhere, once you started looking for it--books, blogs, and social media alike. Ready to do my part, I willingly hopped on board. I began to spend my spare time reading about low-waste and minimalist lifestyles. I started a backyard compost.

I bought cloth produce bags and used them at the grocery store. At a local sustainability shop, I stocked up on reusable kitchen items: beeswax wrap, stainless steel straws, cloth nap­kins, and more. I switched to a shampoo bar and a bamboo toothbrush and started buying natural deodorant in a refill format. Paul, my then-partner, now-husband, joined me in these changes. We even picked out matching reusable and collapsible silicone coffee cups, vowing to never use a dispos­able coffee cup again. I began documenting the whole effort on my personal Instagram account for a small audience of family and friends. I called it "the sustainability project." At first, I thought the videos would just be a fun way to track our progress.

Then my family and friends surprised me by showing great interest in the project. People started asking questions, so I started investigating the answers. Was there anywhere in Saskatoon where you could recycle plastic grocery bags? Where could someone drop off a light bulb that had burned out? Could you purchase non-plastic garbage bags anywhere in the city? Did such a thing even exist? These questions and more began to occupy my time, and I became increasingly intense about recycling, composting, and analyzing--okay, overanalyzing --anything we threw away. Then came the covid-19 pandemic. Almost immediately, everything I had been doing was put on pause. Bringing your own reusable mug or cloth produce bags into a café or grocery store was understandably no longer an option. Although I was initially pained about the overnight halt on most of my sustainability efforts, I have to be honest with you here. As time went on, I stopped caring.

I was both defeated and preoccupied by the reality of the pandemic. Paul and I had to cancel our wedding, and he spent long days finishing up his university degree from our kitchen table. We were both at home around the clock, and I was anxious about everything. I constantly refreshed the news, searching for some sort of explanation or resolution that simply did not exist. Sustainability took a serious back seat during this period of my life, and it stayed there for much longer than I care to admit. I don''t need to explain to you that the pandemic was terrible though. So let''s fast-forward to a couple of years later. With the publication of my first book under my belt, and the pandemic gradually fading into a foggy bad dream, I had time and space to think.

I knew that summer wildfires weren''t getting any better. If anything, they seemed to be getting worse. One day, while I was brushing my teeth with my bamboo toothbrush--I never quit buying the bamboo toothbrushes--it dawned on me to examine the link between climate change and reusable, low-waste items. The fact that I was a bit older now (read: wiser) certainly aided in this cross-examination. How did my bamboo toothbrush relate to larger problems like wildfires, if at all? The link between these two things did not appear overly direct, and I craved more information. Was there a tangible connection between low-waste living and climate change? Were some individual actions more hard-hitting than others? I began reading more broadly on sustainability and climate change. Then, I began writing about it too. I pitched article ideas to various news sources and magazines, because I wanted to research the topics anyway.

I was assigned articles on lifestyle topics like reducing food waste, explain­ing compostable plastics, and exploring whether or not beef could be sustainable. As I dived into these topics and more, I discovered that my previous sustainability project had fallen a bit short. While I had been on the right track, I had missed or maybe even ignored important details. In hindsight, I had not properly done my homework before hopping on board. Now that I was reading, researching, and writing more, I discovered a number of facts that surprised me. For starters, being more sustainable wasn''t really about stocking up on reusable stuff, like cloth produce bags or stainless steel straws. Being more sustainable wasn''t about creating a more intense home recycling set-up either. These actions aren''t bad--don''t get me wrong.

We will dive into all of this and more in the chapters to come. But these actions merely scratch the surface of both the depth and reach that individual action can have. While these actions are on the right track, the track in question is long and complex. Meanwhile, I had a second realization: Other people were interested in these topics too. When push comes to shove, many people genuinely care about the trees, the flowers, and even the bugs. Many also view nature as exquisite, something to be saved and protected. And many people understand that we are not separate from nature; instead, our very well-being is directly tied up with that of the environment. But people are busy with everyday life.

They simply do not have time to research the climate impact of individual actions. Without this information, or even a sense of where to find it, they may not know how to start or what to do. As my own knowledge expanded, it occurred to me that sharing what I had learned with others was an important piece of the puzzle. When faced with a problem as big as climate change, there is simply no sense in not sharing solutions. We are truly all in this together, whether we like it or not. These realizations eventually turned into the idea for Building a Sustainable Kitchen. There''s a large intersection between food, climate change, and what we do in the kitchen. I decided that I wanted to explore that intersection in a way that made it easy for other people to understand.

I knew kitchens, and I knew food--and I knew I could figure out the rest. We''re going to zoom out from food and kitchens for a moment here, just so I can explain a few key concepts. Understanding sustainability and climate change will help form the foundation for the rest of this book. Then we''ll get back to the kitchen, I promise. UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABILITY Sustainability is a word that gets thrown around a lot. I sometimes hesitate to use this word in the first place, because it can admittedly seem like a bit of a buzzword. Sustainability can be applied to food, health, fashion, finance, agriculture--you name it, there''s probably a sustainable version. But I think part of the reason sustainability is used so frequently is because it''s an incredibly fitting way to describe whether something is working long-term or not.

There are many different definitions of sustainability out there. For example, in 1987 the United Nations defined the term as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." I like this definition because, while straightforward, it enc.