Kitchen Warehouse and Berlin are solving Australia’s 700m-high problem with pots & pans

Australian cookware retailer Kitchen Warehouse has teamed up with creative agency, Berlin, to launch a nation-first recycling campaign of epic proportions, designing a 700-metre-high artwork installed at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

A staggering new study commissioned by Kitchen Warehouse has revealed that Australians are throwing almost 2.5 million pots and pans into landfill each year, an average of 7000 every day (or approximately 700m if stacked vertically).

To illustrate the scale of the problem, a bespoke industrial sculpture by artist Rhys Norton has been unveiled at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, aptly titled the ‘High Fryer’. To allow the public to visualise what the full-size tower would look like, a team of digital effects artists from production studio Siamese have added a virtual extension to the physical eight-metre base of the structure, which reaches sky-high through the roof of the Calyx, an enormous glass enclosure at the Gardens, and above the cityscape.

Berlin, Creative Executive Creative Director, Rich Berney, said: “I think beauty is so important when we’re talking about such a sad moment in human history with the amount of waste we’re producing and where our planet is at. It would be so easy to use fear to grab a hold of people… but when the message like this is presented with beauty it can inspire people to think about the good things that can be done. I hope High Fryer as a piece of art can create the space for people to think about a better way to be.”

The campaign isn’t only designed to raise awareness of the issue. It’s been devised to help launch The Great Pan Exchange, a new initiative from Kitchen Warehouse that encourages consumers to bring in their old pots and pans to in-store collection points to be recycled rather than rot in landfill. The initiative utilises new technology and sorting processes which allow the pots and pans to be stripped back, so that the base metals can be recycled along with non-stick coatings and plastic or wooden handles.

Kitchen Warehouse’s Chief Customer Officer, Simon Lamplough, said: “Whilst Aussies 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.”

Berlin, Creative Managing Partner, John Linton, added: “There is so much bad news when it comes to our environmental situation. What I love most about this is that it’s a good news story. Although we currently have 700m of pots and pans going into Australian landfill a day – which is awful – we have a company who’ve put the effort in to create a solution.”

The Great Pan Exchange will provide collection bins at Kitchen Warehouse stores around Australia, with the High Fryer sculpture to be installed at their Artarmon store indefinitely.

Credits
Kitchen Warehouse
Chief Customer Officer – Simon Lamplough
Head of CRM & Loyalty – Justine Murphy
Marketing Assistant – Emma Foreman
Agency – Berlin Creative
Executive Creative Director – Richard Berney
Design Director – Will Miles
Managing Partner, Strategy – John Linton
PR Director – Shaun Devitt
Client Lead – Christina Zimmer
Producer – Matt Barber
Industrial Sculpture
Artist / Sculptor – Rhys Norton
Installation – Chris Davies & Joe Bruneteau
Digital Effects / CGI – Siamese Productions
Creative Director – Merlin Eden
Production Manager – Nicole Norelli
Houdini Artist – Leon Bronkhurst
Matte Painter – Craig Soulsby
Event Videography & Photography – Elliott Deem