Your kitchen’s look and feel is one of the most important parts of your entire home, and the countertops have so much to do with this element that you want to make sure you pick the absolute right ones when you’re getting ready to replace or upgrade them. This can often be one of the most exciting home improvement tasks around, but more and more homeowners are becoming interested in ways they can make their efforts more green, and pick materials that will help the environment directly. We’ll talk about a few of the most environmentally-friendly materials you can choose to replace your kitchen’s countertops.
1) Glass, Recycled
Recycled glass (also known as glass shab) is becoming more and more popular as an environmentally-friendly countertop alternative that avoids many of the negatives homeowners find in the other available alternatives. Recycled glass looks nice and classy, which means you can avoid the unnecessarily austere look of concrete and the unfriendly processes by which other countertops are manufactured.
2) Paper Composite
Science is doing wonderful things these days, and one of them involves combining a bit of resin with recycled paper to create a hard, almost laminate-like surface that’s resistant to heat and durable as can be. In fact, that laminate countertop that you probably grew up with actually uses a lot of no-good chemicals to be created and adhere to the counter itself. Paper composite avoids this while going easy on the wallet.
3) Bamboo
Not only is bamboo a very green alternative to some of the other countertop options — it’s incredibly widely available and supremely durable — but it makes any kitchen immediately look fantastic. Wooden countertops are inviting, plain and simple, and the bamboo look really drives your kitchen’s charm home. While it might seem like using bamboo, a tree, is a bit counterintuitive, bamboo is incredibly renewable. It grows faster than can be contained, so it’s perfect to use for anything from countertops to cutting boards.
4) Glass Tile, Recycled
Glass tile, as it turns out, is much easier to come by made from recycled materials. Recycled ceramic is great, but it can be really tough to find. Glass tiles are tough and don’t cost much, and they’ll last you a good long time. Plus they’re very easy on the eyes.
5) Aluminum, Recycled
Modern is where it’s at, in terms of design and lifestyle, and it’s no surprise that the sleek, modern kitchen look is all the rage. It’s not hard to go for that professional chef sense of style, and you don’t actually need to break the bank on expensive stainless steel in order to do it. In fact, you can likely find recycled aluminum for a fraction of the cost, mostly made up of about 50% to 60% re-used materials. That’s not a bad ratio, at all. Aluminum might not offer up quite the exact same degree of strength as your stainless steel might, but if you find the right manufacturer it can be tough to tell the difference either way. It’ll also cost you a fraction of the price. Whether you go with united granite kitchen counter tops or an upcycled glass tile mosaic, there are a ton of ways to save money on your kitchen’s new look.
Environmental pollution is one of the key issues faced by the modern world. Any step taken in this regard would be worth appreciation. The concept of green kitchens in gaining popularity these days. Using recycled glass, bamboo, recycled aluminum and recycled glass tiles in kitchens are some of the environment friendly methods used these days.