This is our first *official* eco-faith action invitation to our community. We will be posting other ideas from our community weekly on this page.
grow your own scallions in a jar
the surprisingly simple way to re-use food scraps
You can use the root end (white part) of your scallions to grow some more! After using the green stalks, simply place root ends in a jar of water and refresh the water every day. Keep the water level about halfway up the scallion roots — they will drown if submerged.
Though this practice has found popularity during quarantine, my Japanese side of the family (Adrienne speaking), along with other communities, have been saving and reusing veggie scraps like this for generations. This is a great project to do with kiddos (and adults!). Use something normally discarded to generate new life, save money, grow local, and never buy scallions again!
Growing Deeper
We invite you to consider some of the “food waste, labor, & scarcity” implications of this simple act as discussed in this Eater article:
“‘Green onions are something we take for granted, and I think in a time when we’re looking at food waste more closely, and thinking about who grows our food and the sacrifices they have to make to do it, this might make a good starting point for a lot of people to really understand what it takes,’ says [Noah] Cho. Keeping a green onion alive may be as simple as giving it sunlight and changing its water every day, but it still requires attention, consistency, care; produce doesn’t just magically materialize for our consumption. For individuals like Cho, that reminder is small, but significant: ‘There’s a different appreciation I have for something as simple as a green onion, because of this.’”