One Room At A Time

Eco-Friendly in the Kitchen

By Lila Guterman
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, September 17, 2005; F01

We're environmentally conscious, my husband and I, but there are certain things we can't live without, like air conditioning in Washington's sweltering summers.

When we decided to replace our sagging kitchen cabinets and wheezing refrigerator, we knew it would have been more earth-friendly to keep our kitchen renovations limited, to reuse what we already owned instead of consuming more materials. But one of the things I couldn't live without, I decided right away, was new cabinets.

Since the layout of our small kitchen was dreadful, we decided to start from scratch and create a new, environmentally friendly room.

We envisioned a kitchen outfitted with recycled materials, or with products from plants that could be sustainably harvested -- plants that grow quickly and are easily replenished, such as bamboo. We hoped our new products would be made without toxic chemicals that linger in the air.

We knew about the movement to create entire buildings using materials and methods that are easy on the earth, so we assumed that remodeling sustainably would be a snap. But when I called the few architects who had participated in last year's Green Festival, an annual event that brings together environmentalist consumers, speakers and merchants, they weren't interested in a job as small as our 6 1/2 -by-8 1/2-foot Northwest Washington kitchen.

Luckily, one of the architects referred me to Chris Donaghy, a designer whose Lorton firm, Kitchen Brokers, specializes in green renovations. Donaghy says that green kitchens are just a small part of his business -- he has designed about 14 in the past three years -- but that still makes him one of the East Coast's experts on green kitchen renovation.

I was unable to find any other local designers who specialized in green renovation, but for comparison, we contacted two other kitchen design firms. One told me its designers all had "green training," but then offered us granite for our countertop. We said "no thanks," knowing that granite is definitely not renewable -- once it's removed from the earth, it's gone forever.

And Donaghy's estimates fell in a range similar to the other two companies'. He said that green kitchens tend to cost 20 to 30 percent more than non-green kitchens, which can turn many people away from environmentally friendly materials. Environmentally conscious consumers, Donaghy said, often have "less disposable incomes than our regular clientele. They tend to be teachers, scientists, environmentalists." And new kitchens are expensive.

That was a problem for Scott Carlson and his family. When they moved into a house in Baltimore, Carlson said, the kitchen was "totally trashed and totally outdated." Carlson, a journalist who had written about green building, was hoping to do some himself, but he found many products he wanted to use were "super expensive."

So he made trade-offs and used some materials that were not as green as he would have liked. He built a countertop from Formica, which was not green but was inexpensive, allowing him to splurge a bit elsewhere.

That paid off in his environmentally friendly kitchen floor. Carlson's floor is made from Marmoleum, a brand of linoleum, that's made out of earth-friendly materials including linseed oil and natural pigment. He paid about $7 per square foot for it.

We did our new kitchen floor in cork. Cork floors are made from bark that is peeled off the tree and then allowed to grow back. Donaghy ordered our cork from Sustainable Flooring of Colorado, which offers 11 styles and colors of cork tiles for $2.50 to $5.50 per square foot.

Another option was bamboo, which we used elsewhere, to redo the floors in the rest of our condo. Bamboo, a grass, is as beautiful as wood but quicker to regrow and harvest. Sustainable Flooring sells bamboo for $3 to $5 per square foot.

We were also hoping to buy green cabinets. The best-known green cabinet maker in the country is Neil Kelly, in Portland, Ore. Instead of particle board, Neil Kelly makes cabinets out of wheatboard, which is assembled from wheat straw, a waste product that is typically burned or put in landfills, said Paul Quimby, a Neil Kelly customer service representative.

Neil Kelly uses glues, stains and finishes that don't pollute the air with chemicals. And the company makes cabinet doors and veneers from wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council to have been harvested sustainably.

Alison and Paul Trinkoff of Owings Mill bought Neil Kelly cabinets for their kitchen renovation last fall. They wanted to keep their house free from fumes from standard products, Alison Trinkoff said. Had the Trinkoffs bought standard cabinets, she said, "We're going to have this space, it's going to look beautiful and it's going to stink." Instead, they bought from Neil Kelly and sometimes invite guests not only to look at, but also to sniff, the new cabinets.

"They don't stink," she said. "It is surprising."

Unfortunately, Neil Kelly gave us an estimate of nearly $8,500 for our cabinets, plus a whopping $2,000 for shipping from Oregon. That didn't strike us as very green -- it would require so much fossil fuel and produce so much pollution just to get the cabinets to us. Besides, it broke our budget.

Meanwhile, Donaghy had been working to persuade several East Coast cabinet makers to produce green cabinets. The one who agreed was Robert Meyers of Create a Space Inc. of New York. For our cabinets, which were built in June, Meyers used wheatboard, certified wood and non-offgassing finishes. He has since done another green kitchen.

"I'm seeing this to be a great niche business for me," he said. Our cabinets cost less than $7,000, and shipping from New York cost about $750.

Choosing appliances was easy. We bought appliances that had earned an Energy Star, a rating that means they have passed an energy efficiency test. Most major manufacturers produce Energy Star appliances. Similarly, finding low-offgassing paint was no problem.

For the countertops, our choices were more limited. We considered a product called Richlite, which is made from paper from certified forests or even recycled paper. It comes in seven earthy solid colors.

But we ended up choosing IceStone, a gorgeous composite material made of chips of glass embedded in concrete. Three-quarters of the glass, which gives the surface a visual depth, is recycled. IceStone makes 20 appealing colors; we chose one that was pale gray, nearly white. Price varies with color, installation and size of the job; an IceStone employee said it is comparable in price to mid- to high-range granite. Our countertop cost $3,600; a charcoal gray color we liked would have been $1,000 more.

Other green countertop options include ShetkaStone, a recycled-paper product that comes in a variety of appearances, and EnviroGLAS terrazzo, a recycled-glass composite not unlike IceStone.

When it came time to build the new kitchen, Donaghy hooked us up with a general contractor he trusted, Daniel Jamison, whose company, Straight-Line Contracting, is in Springfield.

Jamison and his crew had some trouble finding environmentally friendly glue. He said he found it less strong than conventional glue and so used more of it. He also said the benign paint was thin and required extra coats.

We wanted to heed the green mantra of "reduce, reuse, recycle," so we set out to find new homes for our old kitchen materials. We advertised our appliances and cabinets as free to whomever would come pick them up. "They even took the sink base that was basically rotted out," said Ned Sinkavitch, the contractor who was working the day people picked up our cabinets, countertop, sink, faucet, garbage disposal, dishwasher, stove, microwave oven and barely functioning refrigerator.

As work proceeded on our kitchen, we reluctantly made two not-so-green decisions. First, we went to check out tile for our backsplash. I had researched tile made from recycled glass, including products from Oceanside Glasstile and Sandhill Industries. We looked at the Sandhill tiles, and they were gorgeous -- shiny but subtle, like sea glass. But they would have been pricey: We were quoted $93 per square foot. The manufacturer's suggested retail price for Oceanside Glasstile is also high: $28 to $50 per square foot.

And then we spotted some glass tile we both were crazy about that was far less expensive, but we didn't know whether it was made from recycled glass. What's more, it had to be shipped from Asia, a process that would burn fuel, not to mention adding months to our renovation.

But we adored it and decided to compromise our green commitment there. Later, we were glad to find out that half to three-quarters of the glass in the tiles, from a California company called Lunada Bay Tile, was recycled.

In July, our cork floor was installed. We had chosen a swirl pattern of thin green-blue curves breaking up larger areas of tan-brown cork, looking almost like stone. We liked the sample Donaghy had given us, but after Jamison installed the cork in our kitchen, next to our new maple cabinets, it didn't seem to work. The cork and the maple were too similar in color.

With heavy hearts, we decided to replace the floor with another color of cork, closer to white. The extra cork tiles, and the extra work for Jamison, would cost us only a few hundred dollars -- the advantage of a small kitchen -- and we figured we would like the result much more. With that, we decided to pull up the new, unblemished cork floor and replace it with another one.

It was not environmentally friendly of us, but we just had to have a floor that we liked. We're hoping to find other uses for our extra cork tiles.

Our kitchen isn't finished: the backsplash tile just came in, after its long journey from Asia. It's sitting in boxes in the living room, along with the replacement cork, waiting to be installed. But we already enjoy cooking in our new space, and we hope we haven't hurt the environment too much by creating it. We're planning to buy carbon offsets, which means contributing to groups that plant trees or invest in renewable energy, as a sort of voluntary tax to make up for the fossil fuels we consumed in creating our new kitchen.

That kitchen is more than just beautiful, we think. And, like the Trinkoffs, we're glad it doesn't stink.

Lila Guterman is a journalist and lives in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091600975.html

Refrigerators Beyond Energy Star

Greener refrigerator set to enter U.S. market in 2011

By Leslie Tamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2010; A04

Greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide may not get as much global attention, but policymakers and business leaders view curbing these emissions as a way that nations can shrink their carbon footprints.

Refrigerators have a role in this story.

For decades, Americans have known only two types of household refrigerators: the pre-1996 fridge that uses an ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant - commonly known by its trademark name, Freon - and the subsequent models that use the global-warming refrigerant called hydrofluorocarbon (HFC).

When CFCs float into the air, their chlorine molecules eat the ozone. HFCs may not harm the ozone, but they can hang in the atmosphere for decades, absorbing radiation that would otherwise be released into space.

A better refrigerant, environmentalists have argued since the early 1990s, is a hydrocarbon refrigerant.

Made of only carbons and hydrogens, these "natural" refrigerants do not degrade the ozone and are easily broken down by the sun. Compared with the atmosphere-degrading refrigerants currently used in American households, hydrocarbons contribute little to global warming.

As early as next year, Americans may have a new hydrocarbon refrigerator option that can reduce their global warming impact and their energy bills. U.S. manufacturers would be entering the HFC-free domestic refrigeration market that the Germans helped establish in 1993.

Back then, the United States was phasing out CFCs, and the chemical industry was introducing HFCs as a possible replacement. Greenpeace, the nonprofit advocacy group, was not happy with the "environmental alternative" to CFCs, said Amy Larkin, director of Greenpeace Solutions.

Although domestic refrigeration accounts for less than 2 percent of current global HFC consumption (automobile air conditioners emit the most HFCs), an HFC refrigerant's impact on the climate is 3,830 times more potent over a 20-year period than the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

"But hydrocarbons weren't on anyone's radar," Larkin said, "and when we brought this to the government agencies, telling them these were a better, safe, efficient alternative, we were ridiculed."

Regardless, Greenpeace appealed to a small German manufacturer and helped engineer the world's first hydrocarbon domestic refrigerator. Within three weeks, Greenpeace pre-sold 70,000 HFC-free "Greenfreeze" refrigerators.

Since March 15, 1993, when the first Greenfreeze refrigerator debuted in Germany, more than 400 million hydrocarbon household units have been sold worldwide by several major manufacturers including Whirlpool, Haier and Sanyo.

HFC-free refrigerators have been sold in Mexico, South America, Cuba and parts of Africa, along with Japan, China and throughout Europe.

"Europe has produced incredibly safe, popular refrigerators, but there's still some suspicion in the U.S.," said Durwood Zaelke, director of the Secretariat of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement.

Hydrocarbons are flammable, and there have been isolated incidents of exploding hydrocarbon refrigerators.

But manufacturers meet their country's standards and often have an independent safety organization evaluate their appliances. Although hydrocarbon units may have more robust components to prevent leaks, they do not differ much from HFC refrigerators. Typical refrigerators enclose the refrigerant in a hermetically sealed system away from anything that may spark, such as the refrigerator light.

Based on the track record of the hydrocarbon refrigerators, Zaelke said, it's unclear whether concerns about exploding refrigerators is "a true safety concern or just a clever argument for those who make chemicals. One would think they're relatively safe when there are millions sold in Europe."

General Electric plans to introduce the first hydrocarbon household refrigerator in the United States in June 2011, giving Americans a more environmentally friendly option, though at a hefty price.

Insulated with hydrocarbon foam and cooled by a hydrocarbon refrigerant called isobutane, the 30-inch HFC-free refrigerator would be part of GE's luxury Monogram brand, selling for about $6,000 to $6,500.

"You're making a significant investment, but this is all part of the gradual reduction in how much HFCs are used," said Merrell Grant, the general manager of GE Monogram.

Before these refrigerators can roll out to retailers, however, GE says it will wait for final approval from the Environmental Protection Agency's Significant New Alternatives Program.

SNAP, which regulates chemicals or technologies that replace ozone-depleting substances, ruled in 1994 that hydrocarbon refrigerants were too risky to be used in household refrigerators in the United States. According to an EPA spokesman, at the time there was not enough information about the hydrocarbon refrigerant's flammability potential, and there were other non-flammable refrigerants available.

After issuing a proposal in July 2010 to amend the SNAP rule, the EPA is expected to approve use of HFC-free refrigerants in domestic refrigerators next year.

"Hydrocarbons will slowly take over the market," said Stephen O. Andersen, former director of Strategic Climate Projects in the EPA's Climate Protection Partnership Division.

Hydrocarbons are already commonplace in many household appliances - gas stoves, water heaters, furnaces - and used in products such as bathroom cleaners, air fresheners and cooking sprays.

"Refrigerators are safe with hydrocarbons," Andersen said. "Come on, people will hold a blow dryer in one hand, and a can of aerosol hairspray in the other."

A handful of companies based in the United States have started using natural refrigerants in industrial food service equipment. Select Ben & Jerry's stores in Boston and the District received federal approval in 2008 to use hydrocarbon propane freezers as demonstration projects. Coca-Cola has also invested $60 million to advance HFC-free cooling globally.

At the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, 400 international companies, including Unilever and Wal-Mart, pledged they would phase out HFCs from all industrial equipment by 2015. Said former EPA official Andersen: "I think if the market sees the tide changing and starts converting everything to hydrocarbons . . . it could make a big difference."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602479.html

Future Stovetop?

Space-age stovetop eliminates pots, pans and cookbooks

Bonnie McCarthy


Feb 23rd 2010 at 10:00AM

Look out Judy Jetson, Electrolux plans to make pots and pans seem so last century. Henrik Otto, world renowned director of Global Design for Electrolux in Sweden envisions smart kitchens of 2050 as a cross between the Sci-Fi channel and the Food Network.

Designed to address a population the UN predicts will live mainly in cities (74%) and exceed 9 billion world wide, Otto and his team believe the future lies in appliances that are energy efficient, serve multiple functions and relate to the architecture of the home in a symbiotic (read networked) way.


"I am a strong believer that the only way we can create a sustainable world is through technology," said Otto in an interview with WalletPop. He admits, however, there are some things that should never change. "I don't believe in the Star Trek style where you push a button and your food appears ... there's an emotional satisfaction to sitting down and eating something you have created."

It's the preparation part that's getting a makeover. Heart of the Home is Electrolux's high-concept answer to what might happen in 2050 after we buzz home in our jet packs from our fulfilling, clean energy jobs.

Introduced this month at DesignBoost in Stockholm, Heart of the Home is an amorphous, shape-shifting cooktop-countertop-cookbook-computer that responds to touch. Domestic gods and goddesses of the future will use their fingers to outline the desired size and shape of a pot on its surface, next they will press down with their hand to determine the depth of the bowl or pan. "It's like 3D shapes moving under a skin," said Otto, who explained that the cooking recesses could also be moved around on the counter to accommodate changing need. Similar to how the screen on an iTouch can expand or contract with the flick of a finger.

The rockin' range will also provide cooking counsel, literally at your fingertips. When ingredients are placed into the cooking holes on the countertop, the smart stove will suggest recipes and preparation ideas. Otto said he envisions this feature as a way for people to try new flavors, herbs, and ingredients. Not sure what to do with those turnips, throw 'em on the stove and let technology be your muse.

Otto wants to make it clear, however, that they are definitely in the development stage. "I want to explain that it is a concept," says Otto, "I'm a strong believer that a concept triggers reactions ... and like any concept, it is based on what we know today." He points out that 30 years ago, people would have had a hard time imagining a cell phone without a dial or push buttons that can play music, movies and more. The idea, says Otto, "is to provoke a discussion."

Otto says the closest thing we currently have to something amorphous like Heart of the Home are the 3D sculptures some artists are creating with magnetic liquid and magnetic fields.

Bottom line, how will we clean this thing. Spaghetti sauce? Chili? Otto points to current nano-covered surfaces, fabrics and windows that don't require washing. I'm all ears. He also suggests that we may not have the "luxury" of using water to wash our dishes and clothes in 40 years, but may instead use special cloths or products.

If Electolux's vision of the future is true, copper pots and cook books could go the way of rotary phones, card catalogs and privacy. It begs the question, WWMD (what will Martha do?)!

Otto says companies that excel in the future will be those who look forward and consider the needs of a changing world. "If you think the products you have today are ever lasting, you're on your way out...we don't want to be filling warehouses with products we can't use."

Although, there's no way to predict what Heart of the Home will eventually cost, like all good technology, if consumers wait long enough it will eventually go on sale at Costco or Sears. In the end, it may not be more than what we already pay for snazzy showpiece ranges ($3,000-$12,000), and if you figure in a 14-piece set of stainless steel, All Clad cookware from Crate and Barrel ( $1,149.95), and some counter-top mixing bowls (OXO at Target $25.89) that you will no longer need to buy and store, the price tag may not be totally out of this world.

Start saving up for that kitchen renovation now (you've got 40 years!), home cooking is headed out of the frying pan and into the future.

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/02/23/space-age-stovetop-eliminates-pots-pans-and-cookbooks/?icid=main|main|dl3|link3|http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/02/23/space-age-stovetop-eliminates-pots-pans-and-cookbooks/

Kitchen Light

Is your kitchen glaring at you?

By Domenica Marchetti
Thursday, February 18, 2010; PG04

Light has been on my mind a lot lately. Perhaps it's all that sunshine glancing off the snowdrifts recently deposited by Mother Nature.

Probably, though, it's because whenever I'm in my kitchen, I am pinned beneath the clinical glare of a monstrous 45-by-16-inch fluorescent light fixture situated over my island. Just a few feet away, a second one (22 by 22 inches) stares down from above the sink. The effect is far from soothing, and in fact rather unsettling, as though my kitchen were a morgue and my island an autopsy table.

The good news, as I contemplate a kitchen overhaul in the (hopefully) near future, is that lighting in kitchens has changed a lot since the previous owner of my home remodeled the space some 15 years ago.

"We're seeing a lot of kitchens being created with layers of light," says Ken Anderson, president of Task Lighting in Kearney, Neb. Those "layers" come from myriad sources: general lighting through small recessed ceiling fixtures; task lighting over the sink or range and under cabinets; and accent lighting. "Every time you turn on a switch you can change the look of your room," Anderson says.

Kitchen designer Mary Galloway of Onesta Design in Alexandria agrees, saying she views the kitchen as a place of many scenes set, in large part, by how it is lit. "You think about someone cooking, someone eating, someone snacking at midnight," Galloway says. " . . . Your lighting needs change depending on the scene."

Recessed lighting, which provides the general lighting in many kitchens these days, has come a long way, says designer Jennifer Gilmer of Jennifer Gilmer Kitchen & Bath in Chevy Chase. Most types now use smaller cans than the once-standard six-inch size, and incandescent bulbs have been replaced by more efficient lights.

Indeed, just as we've seen the proliferation of tiny, bright LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs on trees and roofs during the holidays, so are these energy-efficient lights making their way into the kitchen, not only in recessed lighting but also in task and accent lights.

"They produce a tremendous amount of light, and they're very small," says Anderson, whose company makes numerous LED fixtures, including under-cabinet and interior cabinet systems. While they run at least twice the price of their incandescent counterparts, Anderson says, under-cabinet LED bulbs use about one-fifth the energy and last up to 50,000 hours, compared with a typical 800-hour lifetime of incandescent ones.

More and more kitchens are also adding accent lights -- those that draw attention to a particular appliance or decorative piece, the inside of a cabinet, or the so-called toe-kick space just above the floor -- though the latter seems to have its detractors. "I would say that 50 percent of our customers love the toe-space lighting, while the other 50 percent see no point in it," says Anderson. Its primary function (and appeal) is that it can softly light the kitchen at night, he says.

Pendant lights continue to be popular. They are "a good way to add color and some bling," Anderson says. Gilmer says the sheer variety in styles makes pendant lighting a good option for almost any kitchen. In fact, it was a pendant light that helped solve a puzzle for one of Gilmer's clients. "This particular person has contemporary tastes, but we needed something that would fit in with the traditional look of their Georgetown brownstone." In the end she chose a pair of spare, vessel-shaped frosted glass and chrome pendants to hang above the sink and adjacent cream, black and gray mottled granite countertop.

Gilmer is also fond of track lighting, which she says is "making a comeback. . . . They're sleeker and they run off a thinner track." It is a practical choice for apartments where recessed lighting may not be an option, she says.

The question to consider with all these lighting options is how do you manage them? The answer, increasingly, is with a wireless radio-controlled system. It is a costly feature: Prices for such systems start at about $500, not including the cost of components such as dimmers and switch plates or labor. But Galloway says these systems are especially energy-efficient, and they allow you to program any number of settings -- prepping, dining, entertaining and so on -- to achieve the desired effect with one click. "Because there's more lighting coming into kitchens, you almost need to have a system like that in place," she says, "otherwise you'll end up with a bank of 15 switches on your wall."

Though even that would beat my current, perpetual "autopsy" setting.

Domenica Marchetti is the author of "Big Night In" and "The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy." Follow her on Twitter (@domenicacooks).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/16/AR2010021604630.html