Kitchen Waste & Sustainability
As I am a geek who is super passionate about sustainability, waste and energy consumption (yes I won a green grant a few years back to analysis and assess a whole area of Sydney’s waste and energy – nerd alert), I really question anything that claims to be sustainable or green or environmentally friendly! That is why when renovating our kitchen and my husband’s ONLY MUST HAVE item was an insinkerator; I felt I needed to undertake a little research.
When I think of insinkerators, I think of 80’s and 90s houses growing up. It seemed that all of the more well-off family’s seemed to have them. I have memories of brown and orange kitchens with lots of terracotta tiles, in my memory, they were flash (ha ha). I have to admit when we were renovating our kitchen, I never thought I would ever install one! My husband on the other hand, who used to be a site manager on building sites in London had his heart set on one ever since he saw his old boss install them in all his properties. He knew, that one day he would have one…
Not sure what happens to kitchen waste in the USA, but in Australia, Europe, Scandinavia and the UK, kitchen waste goes to the same place as your poo poo. It is considered foul water. Here in the UK, Thames water (who are in charge of my water supply and drainage) do two things with our “bio sludge” aka kitchen, toilet and trapped floor drainage. It gets turned into either biofuel to power the recycling and treatment plants or it gets used as fertiliser on agricultural land.
So, after much research, I realized that actually, as ashamed as I am to say that I am not much of green thumb and really don’t have the time for composting (ok – in my defence I actually bought a composting book and my flatmates can vouch that I started a compost back in the day, so I have tried), I am aware of how much waste goes to landfill and it really does bother me. As someone who loves to cook and I also cook a lot from scratch being a vegetarian (98% of the time.. ok except when I eat Polish food at relatives houses..) I create A LOT of green waste. Potato peels, veggie waste, fruit cores, you name it!
We got around the wet, rotting bin scenario by always emptying our little bin daily, but with our new kitchen we wanted real bins and my husband insisted on the insinkerator! So environmental consciousness check! Smelly, wet, rotting bin solution Check! Dirty, constantly clogged up sink solution Check! It is slowly becoming one of my favourite pieces of kit in my kitchen…
