Re-thinking Metal: Why we don’t believe in coated cookware.

When I first started exploring a potential product range for Aardelia, I spent a long time thinking about materials. Not just how they look, feel, or perform in the kitchen - but how they behave over an entire lifetime of use, and what happens at the end of that life.

One material category stood out straight away: metal. Strong, durable, endlessly recyclable - or at least, it should be.

But as I dug deeper, it became clear that modern manufacturing often undermines the natural recyclability of metals, particularly in cookware.
For example a, cheap and sometimes not so cheap frying pan, might be made from valuable minerals like aluminium or iron. But once coated with synthetic non-stick layers (such as PTFE or "ceramic" polymers) and bonded to mixed materials, it can no longer be easily recycled. Most of these products end up as ash in landfill — a permanent loss of resources extracted from the Earth.

Incineration - ash to landfill - loss of resource - pollution via disposal - really, it’s not good enough and we could do better.

What Happens to Cheap Metal Cookware?

Most inexpensive non-stick pans are built with:

  • Low-grade aluminium or carbon steel (sometimes already recycled scrap),

  • Synthetic chemical coatings designed to create a non-stick surface,

  • Composite construction that often bonds multiple materials together.

Once the synthetic layer is bonded to the metal, the pan becomes non-recyclable through normal channels. In the UK, local authorities typically direct these items to general waste, not recycling. (Source: WRAP UK, "Metals recycling" guidelines).d

Even if the base metal was originally recyclable, the contamination makes the recovery process uneconomic. The resources are lost.

Is Recycled Metal Always Good Quality?

Unlike plastics, metals don't degrade in structure during recycling. In theory, aluminium, iron, and steel can be recycled infinitely.
However, purity matters.

When recycling is sloppy - mixing metals with coatings, plastics, or dissimilar alloys - the resulting material is weaker, less reliable, and often unsuitable for structural use.
That's why the recycling industry, including the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA) and ISRI (Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries), maintains strict quality standards for scrap metals.

Metals are graded and priced based on contamination levels. Clean, pure metal (such as uncoated carbon steel or stainless steel) is valuable. Contaminated, mixed scrap is often "downcycled" into lower-value uses - or rejected entirely.

How We Design Differently at Aardelia

When we create products, we start by asking:
"Can this product return safely and cleanly to the materials cycle after decades of use?"

Our future cookware range will be:

  • Made from high-grade carbon steel or 304 stainless steel, both of which are widely accepted into standard metal recycling streams.

  • Free from synthetic non-stick coatings, bonded layers, or chemical treatments that hinder recyclability.

  • Designed for a long life, with maintenance (like seasoning carbon steel) as part of their story.

This isn't about perfection. It's about responsibility - respecting the resources we use and giving them a chance to be used again.

Why It Matters

A single frying pan may seem trivial.
But multiply it by millions - millions of pans, grills, utensils discarded each year because recycling was never part of their design - and the scale of wasted mineral resources becomes staggering.

By choosing well-designed, long-lasting, and truly recyclable products, we all participate in a quieter kind of activism: one that values the Earth's resources, not just the finished object.

Aardelia may be small, but with education, consideration and transparency, thoughtful design choices may ripple outwards. And maybe the next time someone buys a pan, they'll ask themselves:

"Where will this end up when I'm done with it?"

References and Further Reading: