We are told to never waste anything – especially when it comes to food. Make sure you compost all of your produce scraps, right? But what if we could take it a step further and use more of our produce scraps before it makes its way into the compost bin? Why do we not use every part of the plant? Shouldn’t we be practicing a “Root-to-Leaf” philosophy? By using more of the produce we already buy, we also save money! Well, I’m here to help with 16 ways to use your produce scraps! Prepare yourself for some awesome money saving, waste-saving tips!

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16 Ways to Use Produce Scraps

Carrot Top Pesto

Take the green tops of carrots and blend them up with some nuts, vegan parm, and oil to make a very tasty pesto.

Citrus Peels for All-Purpose Cleaner

Save your lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit peels to infuse with vinegar to create a great smelling all-purpose cleaner.

Shine your Houseplants with Banana Peels

Use a slightly riper banana peel for this. Using the inside of the peel, rub down your leaves to remove dust and dirt. The peel cleans the leaves and leaves a slight shine.

Eat Those Broccoli Stems

Turn broccoli stems into soup, fries, or slice them up and fry like chips. You could also give your doggie the stalks to chew on for a great “chew bone.”

Roast Potato Peels

Save the peels! Toss them in oil, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and enjoy!

Save Apple Cores

You could eat the entire thing, or save them to make your own apple cider vinegar.

Freeze Lemon Rinds to Clean the Garbage Disposal

If you use a garbage disposal, frozen lemon chunks do a wonderful job of cleaning and deodorizing.

Candy Citrus Peels

Candy citrus peels from oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits, and more to make a yummy candied treat.

Pickle your Watermelon Rinds

Did you know you can actually turn watermelon rinds into pickles? Yep, you can – and yep – they’re good.

Turn Apple Skins into Chips

Toss them with a little bit of oil, cinnamon, and sugar and bake until crispy. Who doesn’t like a dessert chip?

Regrow!

Save your celery and lettuce “butts”, green onion bulbs, and various seeds/pits and regrow them. Lettuce, celery, and green onions will grow in water on your window sill, so no garden required.

Reuse Pineapple Peels, Whaaaa?!

Take the core and skins from a pineapple and brew them into a delicious drink!

Soup, baby!

A lot of the veggie scraps you throw out could actually be roasted, steamed, and turned to soup. This is a great way to use broccoli stalks and the ends to other veggies.

Go ahead and blend it up.

Beet greens, strawberry tops, and other stems can be all thrown into your blender and turned into smoothies. There’s a lot of nutrients in those!

Stock, stock, stock

One of the most popular tips I see floating around is to keep all of your veggie scraps in the freezer until you have enough to simmer into a delicious and useful stock.

Compost

And of course, at the very least make sure those scraps make it into the compost so that they can be returned to the earth.

How do you use up your produce scraps?