The kitchen plays a central role in many homes, as the place where we eat, meet, and discuss our days. But it is also an important hub of material flows, where groceries go in, food and waste go out, and water and electricity is being used. What if we could make the entire kitchen experience more sustainable? Various experts discuss the different aspects of the ultimate circular kitchen experience: from the kitchen as component, to the objects, materials and food you use in it. What does the circular kitchen mean to them; and how can we all get into a more sustainable way of cooking and living?
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The Kitchen as Circular Component
The built environment consumes 40% of natural resources globally, produces 40% of global waste and 33% of emissions. Buildings consist of many components such as elevators, facades and bathrooms. In a circular economy, these components are made to be repaired, re-used, remanufactured and recycled.
Current kitchens are difficult to repair, cannot be easily adapted, and are therefore often discarded prematurely. After demolishing the kitchen, there is little opportunity for material re-use or recycling. TU Delft, AMS Institute, housing associations and industry partners, worked together to develop a ‘Circular Kitchen’, which consist of a docking station, where kitchen modules can be plugged in and out. The kitchen modules consist of a frame to which infill and style packages can be easily attached, using click-on connections. With this design the kitchen can be easily repaired, refurbished, remanufactured and recycled whilst offering more flexibility throughout the kitchens’ use period.
Doctoral Researchers Anne van Stijn and Bas Jansen from the TU Delft will share their research and practices on how to design the most circular kitchen.
Circulair resources
The well-known plot, restaurant/bar and workplace in Amsterdam-North, De Ceuvel, has circularity at its core. In their ambition to build Amsterdam’s first circular office park, it positions itself as a Cleantech Playground. With as goal to stimulate new ways of thinking about how to manage resources, and showcasing technologies and techniques that operate on a small scale to close local cycles and bring people back in touch with their basic needs. The creative reuse of waste materials throughout the site is a key component of extracting value and nutrients from what many people view as waste.
Toon Maassen, co-founder of De Ceuvel, will share the lessons learned in the past 5 years of this innovative, circular Cleantech Playground and there many projects (such as compost toilets, struvite reactors, biogas boats and the overall ‘Circulair Buiksloterham Manifest‘). How can these practices be integrated into the houses and kitchens of people outside of De Ceuvel?