From food waste to design: how to make your kitchen greener

For anyone who is interested in the future of our planet, being environmentally friendly is an important factor to how we live our lives. They say that the kitchen is the heart of the home, so when it comes to making your business' home ‘greener’, the kitchen is a great place to start. Whether you are thinking about completely re-designing your kitchen or just changing some of your ‘not-so-green’ habits, there is an array of things that can be done to make it more environmentally friendly. So, here are some ideas of how you can make your kitchen greener… Get a greener design If you are thinking about designing a new kitchen, or updating your old one, you can use a bespoke kitchen design to make it as environmentally friendly as possible. Everything from the materials that your kitchen work surfaces are made from, to the lighting that you choose can be made to be ‘green’ and lessen your impact on the environment. Try using recycled products, low energy LED lighting or a kitchen which is designed to have enough storage for larger amounts of unperishable food or re-usable towels, to help to make your kitchen greener. You can try to use locally sourced materials to lessen the kitchen’s carbon footprint, ensure that your new kitchen walls and windows are well insulated and research into what is the best hob heating method for you. Your appliances Kitchen appliances have come a long way in the last few years in terms of becoming more energy efficient. In fact, using a microwave or slow cooker is actually often a more energy efficient way of cooking a meal than in the oven or on the hob. Try to use appliances which are as energy efficient as possible, ensuring that they are well maintained to keep them efficient. Try to get the smallest fridge possible and keep having the door open to a minimum. If you have a freezer, remember the mantra that ‘an empty freezer is a wasteful freezer’, so try to keep it as full as possible. If you have appliances which you only use occasionally, turn them off at the plug when you’re not using them as this can waste a lot of energy. Good quality equipment There is a lot of cheap and bad quality cooking equipment around, which you will need to throw away in a matter of months. Whether it is a cheap and flimsy saucepan, a wooden spoon which snaps or a fish slice that melts on contact with hot food, throwing these away and buying more not only causes a lot more waste, it is more expensive for you in the long run. Use eco-friendly products We use a lot of products in the kitchen – whether it is for cleaning ir washing the dishes and there are eco-friendly versions of most of these. They will contain chemicals which are less harmful to the environment and will often have substances and containers made from recycled material. There are also home recipes for natural cleaning products. For example, white wine vinegar is ideal for removing limescale and making your sink area glistening, Lemon juice is also great for bleaching and bringing out the shine, and bicarbonate of soda is a great exfoliant for cleaning. There are many things that can be done to make a kitchen greener, from its overall design to small, seemingly insignificant things which can make a big difference when they are added together. The important thing is that we are all conscious of how we are impacting the environment and that we are doing everything that we can to do our bit towards helping to save the planet. By Ella Hendrix