Just how green is Greenpan Thermalon Cookware?

just how green is Greenpan Thermalon Cookware

Trying to filter out the truth from the hype can be quite difficult.

With all of the hype, it is understandable that you might be a little skeptical.

In this article, we will look at the facts about Greenpan cookware, how it is made and then we can see just how green this brand is. We are also going to be focusing on their Thermalon range.

There are two areas that we are looking at:

How green and environmentally safe the cookware is.

How safe the cookware is for you.

What is Greenpan cookware and what do they stand for?

Green Pan originated in Belgium and was founded on the basis that people’s health was the most important thing. They have tried to build and develop their brand from this point of view.

they looked at two areas:

  • The health of the human consumer
  • The environment

A lot of their research goes into the coating and how it is made. They are at the time of writing this on their 5th generation of Thermalon coating.

According to the company, there are a number of things that they have focused on

  • human and pet-friendly – Unlike other coatings like Teflon there are no toxic fumes that come off when the cookware is overheated and the coating does not blister or peel off.
  • Better heat conduction with the coating – making cooking faster and easier do the better heat distribution. This also has some impact on the amount of energy used for cooking saving the environment and your pocket.
  • Environmentally friendly – The cost on the environment for the production of the cookware and how they source their materials

We will look at some of these below.

Is Greenpan cookware safe?

All of our research has shown that Greenpan pans are safe. Their level of heat tolerance is much higher than teflon and the general build of the pan is well constructed.

the coating is scratch resistant and is made from minerals and is what they call inorganic meaning there are no carbon compounds associated with the coating Thermalon is a Sol-Gel coating. The coating is a small inorganic (mineral) particles suspended in Solution

that Gel together to form an inorganic matrix.

This is taken from the website

“With a lower curing temperature and faster processing times, Thermolon™ has a significantly lower carbon footprint in comparison with PTFE “

APPLICATION BENEFITS:Organic Coating with PTFEThermalon coatingEasy ApplicationYESYESLow TemeratureNOYESIncreased Line CapacityNOYESNo PFOANOYESNo PTFENOYESSingle Step SrayingNOYESSingle Step Curing possibleNOYES

ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS:Organic Coating with PTFEThermalon coatingLower COz emmision (60%) NOYESMineral vs Organic CoatingNOYES

Greenpan’s ThermolonTM Marathon healthy ceramic cookware

It is a good idea to look at some of the temperatures so that you can get an understanding of how this type of coating will fare against the traditional Teflon coating. It is also important to understand that this is not the only coating out there that can take high temperatures.

We are comparing this against Teflon as this is was the industry standard and this is the coating that has had so much bad publicity. We have written a little bit about the dangers of Teflon here .

It is also important to point out here that we have little understanding or evidence of the long-term effect of any of the newer cookware that we use. There may be some effects that will not know about until nonstick cookware has come of age.

The end result of all of this is that this cookware has a much larger range of temperatures that it can cook with and the coating does not break down in the same way as other traditional coatings.

We, of course, will always recommend that you should cook within the limits stipulated by the manufacturers. Cooking outside of these stipulations is for the most part where nonstick cookware goes wrong.

screenshot of thermalon cookware temperature data

Image from thermalon pdf

Thermolon safety: Is Thermolon toxic?

In our research, we have come across nothing that can definitively say that there are any toxic effects from Greenspan’s Thermalon coating. As we have said the coating is mineral based as opposed to organic or carbon-based.

If you can remember from school chemistry organic carbon compounds start off as inert but can become toxic when they break down. Toxicity is often the result of an unstable compound that has an adverse reaction with your body. There are lots of these all around us all of the time, think about things like carbon monoxide.

Minerals or inorganic compounds tend to be a lot more sturdy and often break down into a chemical that is not so unstable and toxic. This is the reasoning behind using ceramic coatings on cookware.

Greenpan ceramic Cookware and the environment

Can you ever really get eco-friendly non-stick cookware?

The answer to this is that there are varying degrees of eco-friendly. It is a sad fact of like that anything that is produced using the process that we do to create or cookware is going to have some effect on the environment.

In terms of where GreenPan sits on this scale, it is pretty good. Here are some of the reasons:

  • GreenPan use upcycled metals in their cookware meaning that the original process to get the metals is not there and they are helping to recycle metal that would have otherwise been discarded.
  • The process that they use to make and apply the Thermalon layer creates up to 60% LESS CO2 than traditional nonstick coatings.
  • Has a very efficient coat in terms of heat transfer resulting in using less energy to cook your food the way you want it
  • Is much more robust so lasts longer.
  • Has a higher temper at which it starts to become unstable and does not produce toxic fumes.

From the research that we have done GreenPan is defiantly a for more eco-friendly option in today’s market. If you are someone who takes a keen interest in the environment and likes to keep the impact of what you do to a minimum then this is defiantly something that you should look into. If you are someone looking for a decent pan that has the advantage of being eco-friendly then this is something you should look into.

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