Looking for ways to be more sustainable at home? Us too!
During Sustainable September, we’ve been exploring some innovative companies that align themselves with the values of sustainability and ethics.
From charity collaborations to no-waste policies, these companies strive towards planet-friendly practices and unique products. As the month draws to a close, we want to inspire you with some of our favourite finds that showcase how we can live healthier lives and protect our planet, not just in September.
Foresso
Terrazzo is a mechanically made worktop with flecked patterns of various shapes, sizes, and ground materials. Lately, kitchen design has embraced the playful terrazzo style as worktops, splashbacks, accent panels and even cabinetry doors.
Resource-savvy brand Foresso produces timber terrazzo using recycled materials to create this stunning effect.
Typical waste products like dust and planing waste add speckle, warmth and charm to their products for the quintessential terrazzo aesthetic. By investing in good quality timber, a material that’s durable and practical, they find value in typically neglected pieces, even using their own extraction dust.
Creating a waste system that doesn’t rely on the circular economy is their practical and cost-effective solution to recycling as a small business.
SCHOCK
As our designs seek to push the boundaries of materials so has the finish and feel of our hardest working element in the kitchen, the sink. There are many more options to choose from than just steel nowadays, including Carbon fibre.
With their latest campaign cleverly coined ‘Sink Green’ they’re pledging to achieve carbon neutrality. A future-thinking brand, SCHOCK produces sinks and select fittings from natural materials, using cult campaigns to move the sink to the heart of the kitchen and make sustainability its new priority.
And yet the only fantastical element to this campaign is the story – as the aesthetic visuals, wacky graphics and commitment to nature are a direct reflection of how their innovative but natural sinks are “built in harmony with nature”.
Our favourite find is made from ∼99% recycled materials like Quartz sand local to the factory and comes in a range of colours. Dedicated to resource-friendly production, the CRISTADUR® Green Line range can be returned to SCHOCK to help close the recycling loop.
But it’s not just their products that are planet friendly, SCHOCK has some other impressive statistics like increasing their local biodiversity by ensuring over 50% of their grounds are green spaces and consuming water that’s 95% recycled.
Intelligent Appliances
We’re cooking mad, which is probably why we love designing kitchens. Where the kitchen is the heart of our homes, who doesn’t love having fresh herbs and vegetables to create spectacular dishes with? Especially, locally sourced produce.
Established in the pandemic, Intelligent Appliances set about tackling two significant sustainability issues: supply and waste.
Lockdown, Brexit and the cost of living have all highlighted the UK’s reliance on the overseas supply chain. But Intelligent Appliances have a savvy solution.
Meet the Urban Cultivator, “a fully automated indoor garden” that allows you to grow plants and herbs all year round. Popular in homes, restaurants and big brands, this appliance allows you to grow anything from herbs to garlic to fermenting dough – and requires less maintenance than a supermarket plant, for anyone not particularly green-fingered…
This product is a big step in the right direction as producing home-grown fresh food is hugely beneficial, reducing plastic waste, cutting down on miles and increasing wellbeing. Eliminating the emissions that come with transferring food overseas could take tens of thousands of cars off the road; plus, the shorter the distance from food to plate, the more nutritional (and tastier) the food!
Supplying the right selection of appliances is one part of the puzzle, and the company identified the notable lack of recyclable appliances available and the damaging chemicals that leach in the process. To tackle the wasteful process of repeatedly replacing appliances the focus shifted to increasing the longevity of the products. Offering introductory meetings with chefs, technicians, or dieticians to advise customers of new purchases and increase ownership time.
The company collaborates with charity Emmaus, an organisation that collects unused and unrecyclable products and rehomes them at local schools and other organisations. Additionally, with every product they make, they plant 100 trees in partnership with Ecology, with the aim to offset their carbon footprint used to transport any products.
There are a huge number of products and businesses out there that can help reduce our kitchen design and supply footprint and we’ve only scratched the surface here. We’re committed to changing our approach to design to be stylish rather than trendy and with so many companies offering products like these we predict a positive shift in future design.
What are your favourite finds? Let us know in the comments!
