#Green property: recycled kitchen worktops

Sarah Lonsdale tests the latest 'eco products and sorts the fads from the finds. This week: recycled kitchen worktops.

11:00AM BST 07 Apr 2010

Comments

I m leaning on a kitchen worktop, both admiring and puzzled. It has a hard, polished surface and is off-white, with pale grey flecks blurring through it. Granite? No, not hard enough. A coffee cup I drop on to it makes an impressive bounce. Corian? No, this is more interesting. Laminate? Certainly not, it is too beautiful.

What I am actually looking at is several thousand yogurt pots and a few fridge liners recycled, processed and compressed into a solid, practical kitchen surface, which can be used either for cupboard doors or worktops.

New developments in recycling technology have revolutionised what materials we can use in our homes. In fact, it should be possible never to make another new material worktop. Whether it s reclaimed old-school science lab tops, recycled glass, wood or plastic, there s enough waste and unwanted materials to provide hundreds of miles of work surface. It s a pet obsession of mine, this waste we produce and the unnecessary pillaging of new materials, says Adam Hills of reclaimed interiors company Retrouvius. Let s use what we ve got rather than waste energy on making from new. He cites the demolition of Heathrow s Terminal 2, built as a symbol of modernity in 1955, and incorporating thousands of tons of attractive and now rare because the quarry has been exhausted fossil limestone, which can be reused in floors and worktops.