Eco-friendly Cookware Exclusively at Wal-Mart

Posted by Leafy Green on January 2, 2008 1:01 PM

So over the Christmas holidays our non-stick frying pan bit the dust. You know when a non-stick pan gets that "textured" look and you look at it and realise you're eating teflon chips with your scrambled eggs? I can't remember what brand it was but one thing about non-stick cookware is that it just doesn't seem to hold up to regular use. Plus, the whole cooking-with chemicals thing isn't exactly the greatest either.

So imagine my surprise when Mrs. Leafy Green came home from Wal-Mart with an environmentally-friendly non-stick frying pan from Starfrit. It's a 14-inch frying pan made from 99% recycled aluminum and labelled with 100% recycled paper. Instead of Teflon, the pan is coated in a chemical-free ceramic powder that you can simply wash with soapy water and treat with oil as you would with a cast iron pan. Oh, and because it's such a good heat conductor you'll use 20% less energy when you cook! It's from the Starfrit Alternative line of cookware (they have a bunch of it), all of which use Starfrit's "Ceram-Eco" ceramic coating.

I guess this is a bit of a shameless product plug, but we've used the pan a couple of times already and it's great! (Yo Starfrit, send us a set so we can give them away to our readers!) These Starfrit Alterntive frying pans fit all of the criteria for an eco-friendly product: they're affordable, widely available in Canada and made from sustainable (in this case recycled) materials. Since there is a 90% chance your current non-stick frying pan is going to bite the dust in the next 12 months, when it does you should head to Wal-Mart to check out this environmentally conscious option in cookware from Starfrit.

» Starfrit

Tags: starfrit, wal-mart, cookware, eco-friendly cookware, frying pans	Comments (5) \| Send to a Friend Share on Facebook \| Permalink
		Rated 3.0 by 1 people Currently 3/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5

HOW MUCH ALUMINUM CAN BE EXPECTED TO BLEED THROUGH THE CERAMIC COATING?

B NEEDHAM (Posted March 25, 2008 7:35 PM)

Hmmm... good question. I wonder if anyone at Starfrit can provide us with more information?

Leafy Green (Posted March 26, 2008 10:06 AM)

As long as the pan is not chipped, no aluminum will leech through.

Contrary to PTFE (teflon), ceramic is more fragile to bumps than it is to metal utensils...be careful not to bang your frypans if you are one of the many who pile their frypans one on top of the other...

J Coumbias (Posted March 31, 2008 9:13 AM)

Pingback from birdboard.com

teflon and non stick surfaces on cookware - BirdBoard.Com - Parrot Message Board & Pet Bird Owner Forums

birdboard.com (Posted May 13, 2008 4:50 AM)

You get carcinogenic vapors from Teflon-type coatings long before they begin to flake. Any time you fry or saute and the pan gets above ~450F, it releases vapors. A medical study was done testing the blood levels of those chemicals in a random group of people, and they all had levels that were about as high as the levels needed to start causing an increased incidence of cancers in mice. If we live in a city, we're breathing in the vapors from our neighbors' cooking all the time. That stuff should be banned. And watch out for non-stick coatings in your toaster oven as well--same stuff.

BTW, for oven use, Pyrex or other brand tempered glass cookware is just as non-stick as the Starfrit, i.e. pretty good, but eventually whatever you didn't clean of perfectly after use will get burnt on. Even though they say not to, I use my Pyrex to bake or roast things in my (unlined) toaster oven without a problem. It cleans up a lot easier than the aluminum cookware which is the only other option in that size.

Laura Stein (Posted May 28, 2008 11:14 AM)