Green kitchens: How green is stainless steel?

In our last green kitchen post, we take a look at just how green stainless steel is to use to deck out a sustainable kitchen, and find out what materials Sydney couple Vanessa and Dan Winter have selected to use in their green kitchen.

After seeing how bamboo and plywood stack up in terms of sustainability, Vanessa and Dan Winter have ended their search for the greenest kitchen materials by taking a look at stainless steel.

Here's how they assessed it:

• Where the products are sourced from
• Whether resources are depleted in their production; and
• Whether the products contain VOCs (volatile organic compounds)

Source

Stainless steel is a highly recyclable and recycled product, helping greatly with the sustainability of the primary resources required for it’s production.

One of the downsides about stainless steel is that it typically can’t be sourced within Australia.

“Like bamboo, if you want to buy stainless steel, it’ll have to come from China,” says Vanessa.

“While some manufacturers make up steel here, it’s fairly typical for it to go to China to be manufactured.”

Resource depletion

“Stainless steel has a lot of embodied energy, which is one of its downsides,” says Vanessa.

“But if you use it in minimal qualities, like for benchtops, it’s a pretty good material.”

Embodied energy is a measure that has traditionally been used to assess the energy expended in all aspects of a products manufacture, including raw materials and transport.

However, it does not look at the energy potential of a product, nor does it consider the source of the energy or the climate change impacts of the energy source – meaning that while a product could appear quite high in embodied energy, it may have been manufactured with 100% green energy, so think carefully before you choose not to use a product based on its high embodied energy classification alone.

One of the best things about stainless steel is that very few chemicals are used in its production.

“There is no off-gassing from stainless steel products,” says Vanessa. “It’s mostly welded together as well, so it’s a very straightforward material.”

Ultimately, the most environmentally friendly materials are corrosion resistant and durable, have high-recycled content, and provide long service life and reduce resource use.

Stainless steel provides all these benefits.

“Stainless steel is great because it’s so tough and durable and has such a long life span,” says Vanessa.

“It won’t be affected by water damage in the same way as timber, which is great.”

Stainless steel is also a sustainable material in the environmental sense of the word; it’s normally made with 60% recycled content, which provides savings in the form of lower energy costs and reduced carbon dioxide within the manufacturing process.

Stainless steel is 100% recyclable and can be recycled back to stainless steel melting shops for conversion to new high quality products, which truly contributes to sustainable development.

And due to high levels of recycling, there is significant reduction in the impact on land fill disposal of stainless steel, further reducing it’s environmental impact and making it self-sustaining.

It’s these qualities that make it green enough to be used by Vanessa and Dan in their green kitchen.

“We’ll be using it for our benchtops and splashbacks in combination with bamboo,” says Vanessa.