Recycling specialist The Used Kitchen Company (TUKC) launches its first Kitchen Passport Week from May 17-24 to highlight sustainability.
The campaign aims to encourage more kitchen showrooms to create ‘passports’ for their kitchens, which will give details of the materials that go into their construction, the date of manufacture, who manufactured it and details of any appliances supplied.
TUKC believes the kitchen passport could “make the difference between a kitchen living life to the full and being scrapped needlessly”. It points out that many kitchen materials cannot be recycled and would therefore end up in landfill.
The company says that showrooms and manufacturers are already creating Kitchen Passports in a bid to cement sustainability in the kitchen supply chain. This, said TUKC, could potentially inspire kitchens to be recycled in the future, thus “maximising he value of all the materials, labour and energy costs that went into its creation”.
Customers can then hold their kitchen details digitally at www.mykitchenpassport.com.
Said TUKC chief executive Looeeze Grossman (pictured): “We know the Kitchen Passport concept is ground-breaking. It is really an initiative of the future, but one which is with us now and ahead of its time. Why wait for product passports to be part of daily life and waste yet more precious time for the environment, before we act as a sector? We can do something now, be early adopters and help drive product passport introduction in other parts of the economy. The kitchen sector can be the agent of real change, if it embraces Kitchen Passports.
“We need to get people talking about Kitchen Passport Week and the whole concept of product passports. The time for action is now, not in another five or 10 years’ time, when landfill is at breaking point and we are then in true crisis mode. My message to the trade is to do something decisive today and come on board as a Kitchen Passport partner.”
Kitchen Passport Week starts on the feast day and birth date of San Pasqual, the patron saint of kitchens. The 16th century saint was known for his generosity of spirit in his monastery kitchen and TUKC says hopefully that will inspire manufacturers and showrooms to “show the same generosity to the environment”.