Features

In this covid emergency cleaning and ensuring hygiene at home is very important. So declutter your space to make it easier to keep things clean and fresh

Eco-friendly kitchens use recycled and recyclable materials. Wood products should be FSC-certified, while ease of dis-assemby is important in the design of kitchen units and cabinets. Kuche built the ktchen for the first certified Passivhaus in the UK and they used Durat for countertops, a solid surface material from Finland that is 100 per cent recyclable. Puustelli Miinus is an eco Finnish brand to consider.

Kuche built the kitchen for Underhill, the UK's first accredited Passivhaus, designed by architect Seymour Smith and featured on Channel 4's Grand Designs Live. The kitchen has a 10m run of units with a recyclable Durat worktop. Core design criteria were for all materials to be recyclable, for all wood products to be FSC-certified and for the kitchen cabinets to be designed for easy dis-assembly.

De-Clutter

Cup of tea anyone?

Consider the simple example of boiling water to make a single cup of tea. There is a minimum amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a fixed volume of water from ambient to 100°C at atmospheric pressure, but how close are we to achieving the minimum?

We know trees are good at absorbing CO2 but our town planners should plant hedges near roads too, say scientists. Researchers from Surrey University's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) looked at how three types of road-side planting – trees, hedges, and a combination of trees with hedges and shrubs – affected concentration levels of air pollution. The study used six roadside locations in Guildford as test sites, where the green infrastructure was between 1-2 metres away from the road.