The Top Ten Ways to Make Your Kitchen Environmentally Friendly

The environmentally conscious community is growing rapidly and while most people often try to reduce their environmental impact on the road and around the house, one of the easiest places to start saving the planet is in your own kitchen.

Install Environmentally Friendly Worktops
There are many attractive environmentally friendly alternatives to the harmful man-made worktops, such as those made from recycled or sustainably manufactured materials. Recycled glass, Bamboo and Composite stone worktops are some of the most popular choices that are both stylish and environmentally friendly.

Use Energy Efficient Lighting
Energy efficient light bulbs can save energy consumption by as much as 70% and can also last up to 13 times longer than standard non-efficient bulbs.

Buy Recycled Kitchen Towels
Why not go one better and not use them at all? Kitchen towels have an enormous impact on deforestation, if you must have them then choose an environmentally friendly alternative such as paper towels that have been recycled or produced from a sustainable forest.

Install Energy Efficient Appliances
One of the best ways to save on your energy bills and save the environment is to install energy efficient appliances. Miele currently offer some of the industries most efficient kitchen appliances, such as their line of washing machines, which on average use 42.4% less water and 29.2% less energy than other domestic washing machines.

Use Eco Wash balls
Eco wash balls have received a great deal of attention recently and quite rightly so. They remove the need for using detergents in your washing, significantly reducing your environmental impact and cost of washing.

Compost your Food Waste
Instead of using a food waste disposal grinder found in many kitchen sink units, put your food waste in a compost bin in your garden. This not only reduces the strain on landfill sites and sewage treatment plants, but it also helps to restore the nutrients in your waste food back into the soil, giving you fertile soil to use in your garden.

Use Renewable Flooring
If you’re remodeling your kitchen, consider using floorboards or tiles that use renewable materials such as cork, bamboo or composite stone. Cork and bamboo are not only substantially cheaper than traditional flooring materials like hardwood and laminate flooring, but they also have many other benefits; the waxy suberin in cork makes it both water and fire proof, while bamboo is scuff resistant making it ideal for pet owners.

Install a Recycle Station
By having a recycle station that allows you to easily separate your paper, plastic, glass and food waste you can help reduce your impact on the environment by limiting the amount of waste that ends up in a landfill site.

Buy Organic Foods with less Packaging Locally
Unnecessary food packaging causes an enormous strain on landfill sites, which has multiple negative implications on the environment. By purchasing locally sourced organic food you can not only reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging that you dispose of, but also limit some of the negative production and transportation impacts that buying inorganic and internationally produced foods have.

Don’t Buy Disposable Dishcloths
Instead of buying disposable dishcloths that are wasteful and unrecyclable, buy reusable cotton or micro fiber dishcloths.

Image Credits: Jorge Quinteros and Steve Webel

UK Whitegoods talk kitchen refit…

Johelian is having a kitchen refit and has leapt onto the UK Whitegoods forum to ask for advice. Seeing as they intend to upgrade all their appliances the question is should they go with their first choice of Miele products despite the price?

Don, a UK Whitegoods moderater has responded with the following,

“Miele have a good reputation and track record for producing top quality appliances, hence why washing machines start around the £700 mark. Guarantees can range from five years to ten depending on appliance purchased.

The real issues are the extremely high price of spare parts and the lack of knowledge available to the service sector unless you are a Miele service agent of course.”

Do you agree with Don, would you recommend Miele? Leave your comments below. Or why not join in the UK Whitegoods thread.

Slarti pleased with his KFN 12923 SD fridge freezer

Slarti is a contributor to the The Motely Fool discussion board and, after taking advice from fellow members, purchased a Miele KFN 12923 SD fridge freezer. He’s pleased with his choice,

“We had the device delivered some time ago and, so far are happy with it. One of the reasons that we went with Miele was that the Which? appliance survey (of members) consistently shows them to survive better than their rivals.”

The whole journey to purchase began on the thread in November and after advice from the forum he’s now a Miele owner. Others on the thread include Redsturgeon and BeaglesEnd, the latter passing on feedback he had from Miele customers while working as an electrician for an independent appliance repair company.

The full thread on Slarti’s KFN 12923 SD purchase can be found here. Are you Miele fridge freezer owner? If so let us know your thoughts about it in the comments below.

MSE contributors pick their Top Ten

At Money Saving Expert (MSE) Yorkie1980 has asked his fellow contributors what brands they feel make up the top 10 when it comes to appliances.

“I was hoping some kitchen experts could provide a list of the best (in your opinion of course) kitchen appliances in terms of quality, lifespan and guarantee.”

Both Converse and Clockworks return verdicts with Miele near the top, stating that the brand has a good reputation. Ormus also goes down the same line adding to the thread,

“At the top end the German names are very good.”

Majjie goes all out placing Miele at the top of the list, a list which hasn’t been kept to 10, something which is justified by the similarities between some brands. If you’d like to read the thoughts of the other contributions to the top 10 brands making appliances click through to MSE.

Car forums talk Miele

In the motoring venues of Pistonheads and LancerRegister the talk is not always about torque, bhp and exhaust systems, not by a long shot. And one of the digressive subjects of choice for these two petrol-head communities is appliances.

At Pistonheads the debate was started by bazking69 who asked for advice on a particular rival brand of vacuum. The results saw a host of recommendations for alternatives that featured among them Miele, with Mcflurry seconding Hogeph’s sentiment,

“Miele TT5000 Cat & Dog vacuum is the business. Bought it on the recommendation of a Which? report.”

Over at LancerRegister, Evo_Baz’s new kitchen and the need for integrated appliances sparked Miele conversation with both Black_Knight and Grants offering the brand as a choice that you can’t go wrong with.

To read both threads and join in the debate click the links above.