Kitchen Warehouse has launched a nation-first recycling campaign, in partnership with Perth-based creative agency, Berlin. A 700-metre-high artwork has been installed at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens to help stop almost 2.5 million pots and pans going to landfill.
A new study commissioned by Kitchen Warehouse reveals that on average 7,000 pots and pans are dumped each day, wasting metal and other components that could be recycled rather than ending up in landfills.
Australians spend an estimated $988 million on cookware each year with the majority of having an average lifespan of three years with many consumers buying cheaper pots and pans which are less durable and less sustainable.
The bespoke industrial sculpture, titled the ‘High Fryer’, allows the public to visualise the full-size tower with a virtual extension to the physical eight-metre base of the structure, developed by digital effects artists from production company, Siamese. The extension reaches through the roof of the Calyx, the glass enclosure at the Gardens, above the cityscape.
“The High Fryer is a great visual depiction of a problem most people don’t know exists. There’s limited awareness of the sheer scale of pots and pans which are going to Australian landfill, and by devising this High Fryer 700 metres into the sky, taller than any building in the country, we hope people will sit up and take notice,” Kitchen Warehouse chief customer officer, Simon Lamplough said.
The installation coincides with Kitchen Warehouse’s The Great Pan Exchange initiative, encouraging consumers to bring in their old pots and pans to in-store collection points to be recycled ratherthan sent to landfill.
The initiative utilises new recycling technology and sorting processes, available in Australia, which now enable pots and pans to be stripped back so that the base metals, such as copper and steel, can be recycled along with plastic or wooden handles.
Lamplough said while Australians are facing household budget pressures due to the cost-of-living crisis, they are also increasingly conscious about the environment, so this exchange program gives them a way to access premium quality and more durable products while being able to dispose of their old cookware in a sustainable way.
“We know price is a big factor which drives consumer choice when buying cookware. But if you need to replace that pot every few years it’s not only costing the customer more; it comes at a cost to the planet. We want to encourage households to bring in their old pots to our stores and in return we’ll reward them with a discount on new, longer lasting cookware from Tefal,” he said.
Supporting The Great Pan Exchange is Tefal, partnering with Kitchen Warehouse to give consumers access to premium products at a lower cost by dropping off their old pots and pans at collection points in-store.
Berlin Creative managing partners, John Linton and Richard Berney said the concept behind the High Fryer came about purely from the mind-boggling quantity of waste being produced and the height of the structure was the perfect visual metaphor.
“To launch the Great Pan Exchange we needed a strategy that was going to create impact, so we couldn’t just announce that Kitchen Warehouse had these collection points, there’s just too much going on in people’s lives to think about another thing they had to do to help the environment, we wanted them to love the issue, to care about the issue and be grabbed by it,” Linton said.
By engaging the production skills of the team at Siamese led by creative director, Merlin Eden, Berlin was confident of capturing the public’s imagination by creating a realistic ‘beanstalk’ of pots and pans.
“We have some interesting and unique projects at Siamese – from creatures to aliens and zombies – and this is a different project that we’re proud to bring our technical skills and expertise to visualise this in the most realistic way we can,” Eden said.
Sydney-based artist and sculptor, Rhys Norton, who created the eight-metre high base of the High Fryer, said it posed several logistical and aesthetic challenges, not the least, stitching together cookware of all shapes and sizes in a form that appears to be an organic structure.
“There were a number of challenges to bring this sculpture to life. The physical requirements of pots and pans stacked on top of each other was one of them, the weight and the height presented other challenges, but also engineering the structure so it was safely supporting while giving the illusion of free-flowing form. But overcoming these challenges is evidence that waste can be given new life and be transformed into in this case artistic beauty,” Norton said.
Pictured: Richard Berney (Berlin Creative), Simon Lamplough (Kitchen Warehouse) & John Linton (Berlin Creative) with the High Fryer installation in Sydney.