We follow the principles of The Natural Step in our entire business operations. For now and for our future.
Our kitchens are only available through Kitchen-as-a-Service. In doing so, we help people meet an important basic need by making energy-efficient devices available for all.
Our kitchens are based on a modular frame, which makes maintenance quick and easy. This allows us to easily disassemble our kitchens after use and use them elsewhere.
By using sustainable materials, our kitchen is 82% circular and we are on the way to a 100% circular kitchen. We use as little artificial materials as possible.
For every kitchen we install, we plant two trees through Trees for All. With this we leave a positive impact. A tree annually absorbs 20 kg of CO2 from the air and even more when it is around the equator. We are planting one tree in the Netherlands and one tree in Costa Rica. In addition to absorbing CO2, this also promotes biodiversity in the country. In addition, our kitchens last up to 60 years, so we have a lower material need to fully maintain our kitchens.
The Natural Step at Chainable
The Natural Step is an initiative launched in 1989 by the Swedish Prof. Founded by Karl Hendrik Robèrt and it strives for a sustainable world based on a common philosophy. By looking critically at experiences and lessons from the past based on sustainability principles, mistakes can be avoided and converted into better, sustainable alternatives.
At Chainable we systematically apply the 4 basic principles of The Natural Step to all our processes.
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The 4 principles of The Natural Step
Principle 1 - Don't do things where we restrict people from fulfilling their basic need.
The kitchen is the hearth of a house; it is very important to the users of a kitchen and is therefore implicitly very important in fulfilling people’s needs. We ensure that as few restrictions as possible are given to current, and above all, future generations due to the production and use phase of our kitchens.
Chainable uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to calculate where the largest emissions occur and then meets with experts to reduce them. At Chainable we are working vigorously to reduce our impact on the environment and people. We do this by, among other things, reducing the use of fossil fuels in our production processes, limiting the number of logistics movements, banning packaging materials, involving our suppliers in the circular economy and using as much renewable energy as possible in the production process. In this way we work together on a win-win for the environment, current and future generations.
We ensure that as many recycled raw materials as possible are used; our sheet material is already 90% recycled wood and our steel frame is made out of 25% recycled steel. Together with the Urban Mining Collective, we work to increase this percentage and also increase the reusable potential. Ensuring a truly circular supply chain both in the production and end of life stage.
Principle 2 - Do not introduce more and faster substances from the earth's resources into the environment than nature can process.
Chainable chooses to use this principle in different ways:
- By choosing fewer materials, For example, Chainable uses up to 47% less sheet material. By opting for a longer lifespan and by making the kitchens with input from old kitchens, the addition of new materials is limited.
- The Technical University in Denmark (DTU) has measured the toxicity of our kitchen. Chainable works with natural materials and residual flows, which do not exhaust the earth’s resources and which nature can process again.
- Due to the use of scrap wood, there is still formaldehyde in the sheet material of the Chainable kitchen. Chainable meets the highest standards with regard to the reduction of these substances. If there is a better alternative available, we are happy to use it in our kitchens. If you have any interesting ideas about this, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Principle 3 - Do not introduce more and faster substances foreign to nature into the environment than nature can process.
By means of extensive analyses, Chainable ensures that we banish substances that are foreign to nature. Chainable scores better than the traditional -linear- kitchen on 12 of the 16 impact criteria (such as toxicity, eutrophication, etc.). A score we are very proud of. Due to our business model, we also remain responsible for the kitchens we make, so we put the motivation within ourselves to continue developing the kitchen.
Through Kitchen-as-a-Service we keep a grip on materials and the kitchen-related energy usage; we call it Extended Producer Responsibility † UPS or Extended Producer Responsibility | EPR’. As a result, Chainable creates the right incentive for a competitive circular economy, and provides the motivation for better products in the entire supply chain. By taking back the products after use, and return all (sub) components to the original suppliers, we ensure that products are developed smarter and better so that they are easier can be refurbished and reused.
Reuse in the highest possible value is promoted throughout the chain.
Principle 4 - Don't destroy nature faster than the time it takes to recover.
Chainable uses backcasting to ensure that we avoid today’s design errors Many organizations are reducing emissions from their activities Reduce.
At Chainable we go one step further; why couldn’t we leave the world more beautiful than we found it? For example, Chainable plants 36 trees for each kitchen to work on the future resource supply, nature restoration and promotion of biodiversity. We are busy at the moment calculate our footprint across all business processes so that we can no longer help to destroy nature but continue to work together on nature conservation and recovery.
That is true sustainability.
