Green Options

The folks over at Food Service Warehouse are celebrating the announcement of their Certified Green Commercial Kitchens program by announcing a green commercial kitchen contest, with $40,000 worth of kitchen equipment and supplies going to the winner.  If you operate a commercial kitchen and have taken steps to make it greener, fill out the form by October 31 to enter the contest. It’s free and the prizes include a refrigerator/freezer, steamer, fryer, ice machine, oven, and more.

Food Service Warehouse is an online source for commercial kitchen equipment that has taken impressive steps in encouraging green commercial kitchen practices.  They have devoted dozens of pages to explaining the advantages of going green and giving practical advice on how to achieve it.

A few weeks ago I offered my thoughts on green kitchens on a budget.  Today, I want to focus on making your new kitchen as green as possible, without regard for cost.  Remember, often the greenest options is to keep your current kitchen; many choose to repaint their cabinets with non-VOC paint or to tackle DIY cabinet projects.  This article is for those building a whole new kitchen or are remodeling from the ground up.  It’s up to you to determine the balance between what is the most green and what is the most practical for your project.

The three categories that determine a product’s green-ness are health, sustainability, and energy.  Health takes into account the product’s offgassing of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, especially urea-formaldehyde.  In order to even consider something as green, it must contain very low to no VOCs.  Sustainability looks at the life cycle of the materials used not just in the final product but in the manufacturing process as well.  Products that are made from recycled materials or renewable resources fall into this category, as well as products whose manufacturing process embraces sustainability.  Energy includes the water and energy usage of products such as plumbing fixtures and appliances, as well as the product’s embodied energy, which takes into account the energy used to produce and deliver the product.