Simmer your veggie scraps into a flavorful stock, the foundation of your next meal. To get started, keep a clean, half-gallon carton in the freezer, and add trimmings as you prep meals. When you have enough, put the veggies in a pot, cover with water, and crank up the heat.

Plan a dough swap by freezing half of the dough from your latest baked good and suggesting friends, family, and coworkers do the same. When you’re reunited, you can organize a trade and enjoy someone else’s baking for a change.

Start an indoor compost bin. It shouldn’t smell when you follow this list of what is and isn’t compost-friendly. To build your worm bin, find two plastic tubs and drill holes in one of them to provide proper aeration. Layer in moist bedding—made of things like shredded newspaper, leaves, or coconut husk—and then add some red wigglers, which you can order online. Kept well fed with scraps, your worms will soon be producing “black gold” compost to use in your garden and helping you curb greenhouse gases.

Enjoy a Dose of Nature

Make your own basic bird feeder using pine cones, twine, nut butter, and birdseed. This video from the Feminist Bird Club shows you one way to do it. Hang it on a nearby tree you can spot through your window, then grab a pair of binoculars and do some armchair birding!

Create an herbarium—a scrapbook of pressed, dried flowers or other plants. To prepare your samples, press the plant matter in a large book or between sheets of newspaper and place a weight on top. When the leaves are dry, mount them on acid-free paper to preserve them, and label each specimen on the page. You can also include illustrations, photographs, seed packets, and notes.

Sharpen your naturalist ID skills. Try to identify every species of plant in your backyard or on a neighborhood walk. You can do the same for wildlife—and share your findings through Project Noah, a citizen science platform to discover, share, and identify wildlife.