Your children may have spent the holidays protesting about climate change, your electric car is bursting with reusable bags, you sip your water out of a metal bottle. But what more can you do to save the planet?
There is one big — very big— area ripe for sustainability you might not have thought of: your kitchen.
“When you think about the amount of waste we try to save from landfill, a kitchen can be about 2-3 tonnes,” says Looeeze Grossman, founder of The Used Kitchen Company (TUKC).
If the idea of a ‘used’ kitchen grosses you out a bit, don’t worry — it’s not chipped Formica and a grease-spattered splashback arriving at your home. The 5,000 plus ex-display kitchens that have been on TUKC’s books (there are 200 on there at any one time) undergo strict quality control —“every kitchen is vetted by us” — and all are available for personal inspection before purchase (something Grossman “highly recommends”).
In addition to this, Grossman has a strict ten year and under policy. “Certain styles can look a bit dated so ten years is where we cap it .It’s [mainly] to do with the condition and the style of the door.”
If you’ve ever renovated your home you’ll know that decorating a kitchen is a bit like planning a dream wardrobe —you peruse all the magazines, catalogues and showrooms you can, design the perfect kitchen in your head —colour, size, amenities — and then find out that instead of Dior your budget is more Topshop.
And that’s where TUKC steps in. “People often say they’ve been stalking our site for months while they’re renovating,” says Grossman, noting that a used kitchen can be listed at 50-70% off its original RRP.
Grossman has also sold a number of celebrities’ kitchens — mainly footballers — as well as catering to buyers from France, where kitchens are apparently in short supply and very expensive. She’s even sold a London kitchen to a buyer in Barbados.
Grossman, who lives in Finchley, never intended to get into the kitchen business. Previously in events planning, she started a company called Under the Hammer selling other people’s items on Ebay, “in the early days of Ebay, 14, 15 years ago”, as a way or working around the tight schedule of raising young children.
It was fun, she says, describing running round to people’s houses after school drop off, taking photos and queuing and the post office with bubble-wrapped supplies, but “not particularly rewarding financially.”
This led Grossman to work on house clearances until one day, “someone said: ‘Can you sell my kitchen?’ I realised I didn’t actually know that you could sell a kitchen”, she laughs, but nonetheless “we sold it, and we sold it very well.
“I realised that there must be a huge amount of kitchens going to waste because I’d never heard of people selling kitchens”.
So she approached kitchen showrooms to find out what happened to kitchens once they came to the end of their time on show. Discovering they were ripped out and sent to a skip, Grossman offered a service taking the kitchens away and selling them. The showrooms were “delighted” — not only to have a job taken off their hands but also that the kitchens would be recycled.
The recycling element has always been key for Grossman who says she’s “very conscious of the value of recycling things — not just financially, ethically too” .
The Used Kitchen Company has a campaign called Skip the Skip — calling on consumers to do just that: “We encourage everyone to recycle”.
Launched at the start of 2018, the campaign aims to promote the fact that a kitchen can be recycled — and re-loved. “We want to encourage people to be more eco-friendly when they have a kitchen to get rid of.”
She believes that most people aren’t aware of how much waste is involved in binning a kitchen and how it can affect landfill.
She says that buying used kitchens is a trend she can only see growing, especially when it comes to the younger generation. Looking at her children — aged, 22, 20 and 17 —she says their generation are much more conscious and aware of recycling and green issues than older people, “and so the waste reduction component is an important selling factor”.
Her children are very “pro it — they love the idea that I’m recycling kitchens”.
Another factor which boosts her business is the cost of living — and moving. “People can’t afford to move house so they’re deciding to renovate and the first thing they decide to redecorate is the kitchen.”
So if your house could do with a bit of a facelift for 2019, think about recycling and reusing.
You might get the kitchen of your dreams.
