Fitted Kitchens and the Environment - Two Viewpoints to Conscious Living

It can only be said to be a good thing that mindfulness of our consumer waste and of our fuel consumption has begun to sink in to our culture as a whole. Along with the media's focus on the dire need for radical efforts in energy efficiency and cutting emissions, we have been stunned to learn of recent estimations of a 33% wastage of all un-bought and even uneaten supermarket food per day in the UK alone (estimably much worse than pre-refrigerator times).

In this article, I'd like to discuss just how these modern developments are currently informing the design of fitted kitchens. As the kitchen is in many cases the highest contributor to waste in produce and energy, the concentration is highly warranted. Though a relatively new focus in what we might call the development of the 'mindful' consumer, there are some exciting new developments in the drive to combat our consumer wastage at its source.

One advantage of a new fitted kitchen lies in your dictating how much cupboard space you will need to devote to food storage. With the development of a kind of simplified modern cooking technique, we are generally becoming persuaded away from buying outlandish or rarely-used ingredients and learning to develop a keen idea of our pantry closer to our fridge-less forebears. We are generally becoming better at knowing what we are likely to cook, as the new recipe books often indicate in their introductions.

Thinking also of appliance storage, we are gradually being deterred from stowing the 14" pressure-cooker and the sixty-piece food-mixer and its friends, in favour of a more simplified core group of equipment, perhaps four or five multi-purpose machines catering for most of our cooking needs. Empty cupboard space exists to swallow unneeded preserves and unused appliances - in this way we waste first money on purchasing the equipment and then money and food on old faded packets of things at the far corners of the cupboards. In addressing these problems in the design of a fitted kitchen, you can do away with unnecessary banks of cupboards and utilize the space to suit better the amount you consume in your home.

We might call this innovation a change of attitude - in order not to waste one third of our supermarket shopping, we need to see the food we consume as just as perishable as it would have been in a larder or pantry. But there are significant things happening in kitchen design and its technology to ensure efficiency and reduced emissions even from the production line. Recycled glass worktops, energy-saving kitchen lighting, and bespoke recycling storage units can all be integrated into the very design of modern fitted kitchens, showing an increasing level of commitment from suppliers of all elements of the kitchen.

We have seen recently a steady increase in attention to ecological and environmental issues in the home, and finally it seems that the kitchen design area is receiving the boost it requires to meet the grade, and right across the board, too. With further innovative ideas underway, we could soon be seeing a change for the better in our home kitchen management, and the way we think about purchasing a modern fitted kitchen.

To find out more about Fitted Kitchens and the environment visit Betta Living's website.