Sustainability in the kitchen industry

Sustainability; an important issue for people, the planet and therefore the industry. But how do you make that translation within the kitchen industry? A question that has been on my mind for some time. I have learned a lot about sustainability over the past 30 years and feel an enormous need not only to actively contribute to it, but also to talk about it. The reason I grabbed The Pen when I was asked for this guest column.

Sustainability -if you ask me- has two aspects within our industry. On the one hand, we must take care of the environment in which we operate, or in other words: ensure that we operate in an environmentally friendly way. On the other hand, products must be made in such a way that they are of good quality and therefore last long and energy-efficiently. I believe that every manufacturer has this moral obligation. So also in the kitchen industry. We must make it possible for appliances to be easily maintained, repaired, modernized or parts reused. But did you know that over 80% of the CO2 footprint at companies like ours is determined by consumers' use of the appliances? 

Lead the way

So then it is important that consumers are well informed about how to use appliances optimally - and thus as sustainably as possible. From the industry, we help end users do this by, among other things, offering apps that allow appliances to 'communicate' in order to reduce water and power consumption and thus save the environment (and wallet). But when you consider that in only 25% of the cases consumers use the available app, there is an important task there for kitchen designers and kitchen retailers. When selling an appliance, they can actually educate and guide consumers through the kitchen. 

Value retention

Where I think there is also an opportunity is that when talking about a new kitchen, there is talk of discarding the old kitchen. At the producer level, decent steps have already been taken with the collection of e-waste through Wecycle, but unintentionally consumers are not yet making sufficient use of this. Thus value is lost that is locked up in discarded appliances, not to mention the negative impact on the waste stream in which they end up. So we must move towards reuse or recycling where no or much less value is lost. And that requires a lot of knowledge, which needs to be shared by manufacturers to kitchen designers and kitchen retailers.

Creating scale together

Now, sustainability is also a subject of competition. Yet we will have to work together to make a big difference in the field of sustainability. Individual companies are rarely big enough to make big steps, so only together can we achieve the ambitious goals for a circular world. For myself, I have therefore formulated a fine task: how can I help and share knowledge so that we do not stand in the way of progress in this area?
I am happy to engage in the conversation about that.

Stefan Verhoeven
Managing Director at Miele Nederland b.v.