No fridge? Cool!

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 22 Feb 2009, 08:07

The Guardian - 19/02/09

Doing without a fridge is a badge of honour for some green activists. But how do they cope? And how much does it help?

Article continues ...

tomhitchman · Post by **tomhitchman** » 22 Feb 2009, 11:16

"If I was to examine my life and ask what would reduce my carbon footprint, I would say stop eating meat," Maslin says. "That's much more significant than unplugging your fridge."

And if you stopped eating meat and dairy then there is much less reason to have a refrigerator.

stunningly she reckoned that the fridge used 1300kwhs a year!!

Ben · Post by **Ben** » 22 Feb 2009, 15:35

Rachel seems to have a freezer in the basement, so not that green. She regrets not being able to have a cold beer; not a problem if you like native British beers.

Going fridgeless would be a doddle for me. My cellar is cold, even in the summer. There are meat hooks down there from where meat used to be hung.

gug · Post by **gug** » 22 Feb 2009, 19:49

whilst i genuinely applaud people like this for going the extra mile, I cant help thinking that its a backwards step.

Instead of spending extra effort to make up the lack of convenience, wouldn't time be better spent finding ways to make sure we can have this convenience with as little energy and ill effect as possible ?

As many of you will have seen before..
http://www.ecosherpa.com/interesting-no ... e-thinker/

surely *thats* the way to go. I *want* the convenience of a fridge and freezer. My fridge freezer uses an average of 0.6 kwh/day.
It cant be beyond the wit of mankind to take a fridge freezer like that, insulate the heck out of it, turn it on its back (chest-wise) and bring its consumption down to, say a third.
(if not better).

Then it might be possible to power it directly from solar - even in the uk.

We humans are supposed to be good at innovating to improve our lives.
Making them harder overall strikes me as the wrong way to go.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 22 Feb 2009, 20:09

Squadrons of fridges have also been proposed as a Grid-evening-out mechanism for when (The Glorious Day and all that) the Grid has so many renewables in it that demand management becomes really necessary.

Having said that, as recently as the 1980s my grandparents had no fridge and did very nicely thank you with just a pantry (and they weren't veggies or anything fancy). It might provide some life-skills lessons.

Ben · Post by **Ben** » 22 Feb 2009, 22:49

RenewableCandy wrote:Having said that, as recently as the 1980s my grandparents had no fridge and did very nicely thank you with just a pantry (and they weren't veggies or anything fancy).

A good point, we're very pampered these days.

Until recently none of my grandparents had central heating, a car, double-glazing or much disposable income. The only credit they had were mortgages. Somehow they managed to bring up lots of children. I can't say I'm any happier than them.

gug · Post by **gug** » 22 Feb 2009, 23:25

RenewableCandy wrote:
Having said that, as recently as the 1980s my grandparents had no fridge and did very nicely thank you with just a pantry (and they weren't veggies or anything fancy). It might provide some life-skills lessons.

yes , I appreciate all that. They also had local shops, butchers and fishmongers that delivered to the door, milkmen etc.
Whilst harking back to the "good old days" is a nice idea (i'm a child of the 70's (all of them) - so am not adverse to common sense and a less wasteful lifestyle at all - but human kind (for all its evils) has mostly relieved itself of drudgery via innovation. If we can do that without the ill-effects of GW/energy waste then that surely is preferable - unless the desire is to lead a less convenient harder life. I *know* peak energy approaches, I *know* things are going to get much tougher - but i dont actually *want* my life to get more difficult than it absolutely has to - that would start to get old very quickly.

Edited to clarify: That might have sounded a slightly sh***y response, but it wasnt meant that way.
Often (this not directed at you RC) these conversations seem to go the way of... "Oh well, things are gonna get tough matey boy, look how they managed in the old days, thats our future etc etc".
Whilst I completely appreciate these opinions, they can seem a bit defeatist at times. What the world needs is independent engineers to design around the challenges that face us, we seem to have (and i include myself here) - quite enough doomers.
If as a species, we cant engineer our way around convenient food preservation then we truly are borked !

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » 23 Feb 2009, 08:39

I haven't had a fridge for a couple of years now. It wasn't my intention to be 'green', I just didnt want to lose the space to a fridge on my narrowboat, and didn't want to spend all the power either. The only thing I typically put in the fridge was milk anyway. Everything else was eaten long before it would go off.

At my new place in Wales there is also no fridge, but there is a freezer that came with the house. I barely use it right now, but once we start raising chickens we will no doubt freeze a fair amount of meat.

Some people always seem to have an entire fridge full of poncy southern food like hummus and olives

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 23 Feb 2009, 08:59

How do you barely use a freezer. Seems to me it's either on or off.

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » 23 Feb 2009, 09:03

biffvernon wrote:How do you barely use a freezer. Seems to me it's either on or off.

Quite true. And it's worse when almost empty. But you can't switch it off, because it would melt all the ice everywhere and then smell bad and need cleaning. So you leave it on, even though it wastes so much energy.

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 23 Feb 2009, 09:21

I don't want to do without a fridge. It is useful. Loads of things such as mayonaise for instance say keep refrigerated after opening. This is to make it last much longer! We use a lot of milk in our house. Salad keeps better in the fridge. Cold meat, cheese, butter, margerine spreads all need to be kept in the fridge. I have a chicken leg in the fridge left over from Sunday's dinner. I will eat it in a sandwich for lunch probably on Tuesday. Without a fridge I wouldn't.

There are five full size people in our family. The fridge is essential. We also use a (smallish) freezer and we find that essential too, although less essential than the fridge.

I agree with gug - I don't want to go backward (althought I fully realise we might have too). It is much better to be able to engineer better solutions using less power than having to do without modern applicances especially if they lake life much easier and in my opinion fridges do.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 23 Feb 2009, 09:28

Further to what Snow said, I roasted a big piece of pork last night, I'll be eating it as lunch for the rest of the week.
Hard to do that without a fridge.
I dont have a "cold room" and short of a lottery win never will.

After some sort of communication, device, my electrical power will be running a fridge and freezer.

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » 23 Feb 2009, 09:29

snow hope wrote:mayonaise

I guess life will end if we have to do without mayonaise

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » 23 Feb 2009, 09:31

DominicJ wrote:Further to what Snow said, I roasted a big piece of pork last night, I'll be eating it as lunch for the rest of the week.
Hard to do that without a fridge.

Actually we did exactly the same a couple of weeks ago without the benefit of a fridge. And - get this - we didn't die yet!

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 23 Feb 2009, 10:06

Tess wrote:
DominicJ wrote:Further to what Snow said, I roasted a big piece of pork last night, I'll be eating it as lunch for the rest of the week.
Hard to do that without a fridge.
Actually we did exactly the same a couple of weeks ago without the benefit of a fridge. And - get this - we didn't die yet!

I'd like to see you do it in the middle of summer as opposed to a couple of weeks ago when most of us had 3 inches of snow on the ground and frosts every night.