Sara here. Today I’ve spent the majority of the morning working with copper and nothing else. Copper is on the brain.

Copper cookware is an art form that is, to me, timeless because it really does last a ridiculously long time. Copper cookware has been dug up in Egypt, relics of cultures lost thousands of years ago. But what remains? The copper pieces. Copper doesn’t rust, doesn’t crumble the way iron can, and the beauty of my day job is that the tin-lined copper pieces I’m holding over the buffing wheel could very easily be dug up in an archeological dig 5000 years from now.

That’s insane to realize, but very very true.

It’s not why you buy copper cookware, obviously. You don’t go in a store and say “Clearly, this will last millennia, and therefore I should buy it!”

You purchase cookware based on its ability to perform on your stove, or based on the contents of your wallet. I get it, because I’ve done just the same.

Yes, I create copper cookware in my garage/copper/tin shop. So I’m biased. But let’s go where the discussion about copper cookware purchasing goes first. Your pocketbook.

Figure you purchase a handful of (likely non-stick, paint coated) pieces from the local Target or Walmart. Or maybe you even go to Macy’s, but you’re still not spending top dollar. (I know I didn’t for years!) Fast forward about five years later, and your non-stick coating doesn’t work the same, and might even be chipping off and it’s time to throw that piece of cookware into the trash. The landfill. Then you go out and buy some more. Let’s be generous and say each piece of cookware is $40/e to balance out the really inexpensive and relatively expensive. And let’s say you only buy 1 kind of pot ever. But you have to toss it for safety reasons or because it breaks about every 5 years. And let’s hope you live to be 90, and you started cooking at 30. That’s roughly 13 rounds of $40, so you’re spending $520 to have one pot in your house, which all ends up in the landfill. And that assumes you only get 1 piece – most of us who cook have at least 4 – 7 pieces ofcookware in our kitchens.

Copper cookware is going to last you the rest of your life, plus it’s safe (copper cookware is not made with any non-stick stuff that’s um…not exactly safe and pure) and healthy and green/energy efficient (it’s 25x faster using less heat than stainless), so your gas bill is lighter too.

One copper pot and lid will run you around $500, give or take. And it’ll last you…you know. Forever. No landfill. No unhealthy plastic in your food. Just pure metal cookware. Healthy, transparent, and safe. Just like what we say we want with our actual food. Is it so much to want the same from our cookware?

(You all know tin is non-stick, right? As in… ‘nature’s teflon’ – it’s honestly just like that. Except made in nature. You know. Healthy and safe. Pure.)

I create my copper cookware knowing that I’m supporting a lot of craftspeople in the country – my neighbors, and other family owned and operated small businesses – by working with local sources. I like shaking their hands and watching them spin the copper bodies on the machine (which, by the way, is one of the few things I can’t do in my garage). I appreciate seeing the huge furnace at the foundry (because the other thing I can’t do in my garage is melt and pour ductile iron) where the owner is the guy answering the phones and my emails. And it’s a blast taking the kids up to the rivet maker, where they hunt for old rivets in the cracks while I get a lesson on machinery built in the early 1900’s that still works today to make my copper rivets right up the road from my house.

Am I old fashioned to like such handshaking and supporting local? Yeah, I guess. Do I love manufacturing copper cookware? Heck yeah. Am I obsessed with learning the vintage tinsmithing trade from the master smith, Bob? Definitely. Do I believe in making something (in this case, copper cookware made entirely in America!) that will actually help everyone in the long run, creating a wave of people who cook in something that’s cheaper to heat, won’t end up in a landfill – as proven for the past several thousand years? Absolutely.

So now I’ll get off the soapbox. Go buy some copper. Real copper cookware.