Skip to content
The pioneer of kitchen recycling – and its champion since 2005 – has taken its groundbreaking ‘Kitchen Passports’ eco-initiative to the next level in a milestone for UK recycling and waste control.
My Green Pod Hero The Used Kitchen Company (TUKC) has launched a new website https://mykitchenpassport.com/ that will be the virtual home for all Kitchen Passports ‘held’ by eco-friendly consumers UK-wide – on behalf of their kitchen.
By creating a Kitchen Passport for their kitchens, a kitchen showroom can instantly demonstrate its green credentials to customers.
If the showroom has not taken this step or has not been asked to do so by an eco-friendly kitchen manufacturer, the first buyer of the used or ex-display kitchen can take the lead and show their environmental concern by filling in the details on the website.
The passport is free of charge; it asks for the year of ‘birth’, the kitchen manufacturer’s details, the materials used in the kitchen’s construction and the names of buyers who have owned the kitchen over the course of its life.
‘A virtual Kitchen Passport can stay with the kitchen throughout its life, enabling one owner to pass on the passport to the next owner and do the right thing by the environment. If passed on during a house sale, it could plant a recycling seed in the minds of new owners who might otherwise consign a kitchen to landfill.
‘The Kitchen Passport should create a sea-change in the kitchen sector and become a massive circular economy initiative. We have invested in the Kitchen Passport portal, so showrooms can highlight their green credentials by creating kitchen profiles. Alternatively, they can give a purchaser of an ex-display kitchen the details they need, so they can create a passport to make it easier to put the kitchen back into the circular economy at a later date.’LOOEEZE GROSSMAN
The Used Kitchen Company’s CEO
The passport crucially includes details of how to dismantle the kitchen, making it easier to sell on to another buyer, and highlights how best to recycle the kitchen’s components at the end of its life.
The Kitchen Passport also handily enables the passport holder to add the serial numbers of appliances and the numbers of service providers such as showroom, fitter, plumber, electrician, appliance repairers and insurer.
The initiative is focused on extending a kitchen’s ‘cradle to grave’ lifespan. It encourages not just a first recycling, as would occur between a kitchen showroom selling an ex-display model or a homeowner selling their used kitchen, but a second and possibly third recycling, too.
‘We are also urging manufacturers to give the Kitchen Passport their stamp of approval And, of course, we want homeowners to play their part and not only buy a used kitchen but give others the chance to do that, too.
‘Too many fabulous kitchens reach landfill without having achieved their full life expectancy and potential. It is totally unnecessary and we have acted in this dynamic way in order to change that and make manufacturers, showrooms and consumers think about the consequences of not recycling something as huge and material-filled as a kitchen.’
LOOEEZE GROSSMAN
The Used Kitchen Company’s CEO
Many have fallen in love with their kitchen space during lockdown, or grown to hate it with a passion and been left desperate to change it as soon as possible.
There has never been a better time for the Kitchen Passport to be launched. Quality kitchens can last for decades, but too many head to an early grave.
TUKC was founded in 2005 and has already become a two-times ‘green hero’ thanks to saving nearly 15,000 tonnes of kitchen materials from an unnecessary landfill grave.
It now believes its Kitchen Passports can deliver even more significant green benefits, and wants to see the same reaction to kitchen waste as has been witnessed to fast fashion.
Independent showrooms and studios have a 40% share of the market and all could participate in the Kitchen Passports scheme. TUKC says 1.2m kitchens were installed in 2017 but only a fraction are recycled.
The Kitchen Passport marks a big step for both the kitchen industry and environmental change in the UK, and is possibly the only response to the idea for product passports that emerged from Defra’s December 2018 Resources & Waste Strategy.
Buying or selling a secondhand kitchen diverts valuable resources from landfill – and leaves you quids in.
The Used Kitchen Company (TUKC) has pioneered the concept of kitchen recycling.
The sharing app that lets you declutter the home, reduce waste and help out a neighbour.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Weekly ethical news, offers, comps and a free digital mag (quarterly) – what’s not to love?
