Maybe you don't think you qualify as a bona fide tree-hugger. But there are plenty of environmentally conscious things you might already be doing. Here are some things Utah cooks do to help protect the environment:

Diane Sheya, Ivy House Herbs cooking instructor: "I compost, and it goes back into my garden. I buy food and other products in bulk. Even if I have a party, I don't use paper products. I use dishes and run them through my dishwasher. We also use the curbside recycling offered throughout Salt Lake County.

"I grow my own herbs, and you can do that and dry them yourself to use in the winter months. Come summer, any leftover dried herbs can be used on the barbecue grill, like you'd use wood chips, to give off lots of flavor."

Jane Boyle, Kaysville: "I plan to get reusable (fabric) grocery bags. I like a few paper/plastic bags, but I get overrun with them. I use my Crock Pot/outdoor grill/microwave in the summer so I don't have to heat up the kitchen. That keeps the air-conditioning bill down. I run errands only one day a week. I try to find the grocery store with the most deals that I want instead of traveling to lots of different ones."

Becky Eckersley, West Point: "I grow food in our garden, and I recycle my grass clippings into our garden for mulch. In add the fall leaves into the soil versus bagging them for the dump. I dig and pull out most weeds by the roots from the lawn, orchard and pasture, versus using chemicals. When school papers come home to be tossed, we use the back sides for scratch paper. Our vacuums are the bagless type, so we don't have to buy replacement bags. We also recycle our soda-pop cans."

Lettie Flatt, executive pastry chef at Deer Valley Resort: "When I was 20 years old, I read Frances M. Lappe's 'Diet for a Small Planet.' It changed my life. The author outlines a way to reduce the waste of our agricultural resources with a diet that uses the Earth more efficiently.

"We follow a plant-based diet, and we buy about 75 percent organic. We buy bulk to reduce packaging. We recycle as much as we can. We use our empty cottage-cheese cartons to store food. Our freezer looks like it is full of Nancy's Organic Cottage Cheese (which, by the way, is so good we can't eat regular cottage cheese anymore). But in those cottage-cheese containers is leftover soup and rice and homemade pesto from last summer's basil crop."

Ruth Kendrick: "I try to do an oven meal when I turn it on: meatloaf and baked potato, squash — dishes that can all be cooked at once in the oven."