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How green is your kitchen? If you’re part of what today’s New York Times describes as a “small segment” of the eco-conscious, you don’t have a fridge.

Here in New York, it’s not uncommon to help the environment by burning less natural gas; you eat out and use your oven as it was meant to be used in tiny apartments – to store sweaters. But some folks – apparently, ones who give up readily cold beer and live in chilly climes where they can store their mayo on the porch – have gone the extra mile by disconnecting their refrigerators.

“It seems wasteful to me to use even an Energy Star-rated fridge,” one satisfied, fridge-less woman, Rachel Muston of Ottawa, tells the newspaper, “because I’m getting along fine without one.”

It's not a radical idea to want to reduce the carbon footprint of your kitchen – alt-energy companies are building solar refrigerators, and even Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard patented three prototypes that operated without moving parts. But is it really necessary to junk your icebox in the process?

Consider this: refrigerators use the least amount of energy of all common household technologies, according to data released last month by the Department of Energy. Home heating uses the most, followed by, as a group, lights and appliances including dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, computers and TVs. Water heaters make up the third largest share of household energy, followed by air conditioners.
 
So exactly how many people in the U.S. have actually sworn off refrigeration? Deanna Duke of Seattle, who runs an eco blog called The Crunchy Chicken where visitors have debated the practice, tells ScientificAmerican.com that she's not aware of a formal stat. But of the 50,000 unique visitors to her site, she estimates that roughly 11 have disconnected their fridges. Another eight, she says, "sounded willing."

Duke published a blog post last month listing reasons why forsaking the fridge isn't worth it: additional tailpipe emissions from those extra supermarket runs, food that goes bad before you eat it, and the extra packaging from buying more frequent, smaller quantities. Her online adversary, a blogger known as "Greenpa," has rebuttals, among them, that city dwellers can easily pick up food on foot, and that many foods you think require refrigeration (such as butter, eggs and cheese) don't.

Other greenies aren’t convinced that life without a fridge makes sense. “It’s silly not to have one,” Texas mom Gretchen Willis told the Times, “considering what the alternative is: drinking up a gallon of milk in one day so it doesn’t spoil.”

Image © iStockphoto/Peter Finnie

6 Comments

1. 1. scientific earthling 04:14 PM 2/5/09

   Its easy in colder climates, in England I did not have a fridge, left the milk just outside the kitchen window on the ledge. In hot warm climates the fridge is a necessity. Its been an unusually warm summer this year in Sydney, my 4 star rated fridge goes non-stop and can not cope. Got out the duna and used it as extra insulation on the top and sides, seems to work. Solar hot water supplies all my hot water needs summer and winter.

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2. 2. creeative05 10:25 PM 2/6/09

   I have lived intermittantly without refrigeration for years. Winters, late fall and early spring are all seasons where I used a tin box outside with a good cretterproof lid. Western oklahoma has hot summers, however, so if I had access to a fridge, I used one for those hot months. Also, I found ways to eat a satisfying diet with some substitutions like powdered milk, canned fish, fresh fruits, shelf stable foods, and cooking in small quantities that leave no leftovers. Root cellars are valuable cool storage and I found that I could keep a beer or two pretty cold in the upper tank of the toilet! In a nation where invention is, indeed the mother of necessity, it is fun to get back to the basics.

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3. 3. bigbaddude 06:41 PM 2/7/09

   Its amazing all this time, we thought buying a more econimical car, solar panels, and driving less was the best we could do.
   I turnes out by not eating meet 1 day per week does more to stop global warming than everything we could emagine.
   How odd?

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4. 4. eco-steve 06:46 PM 2/9/09

   My grandmother had no fridge. She had a larder on the north side of the house with a wire grid to let cool air in from the shade. The food cupboard had a cloth cover dipped in a water trough, so evaporation chilled the meat, butter and milk inside. Try this : Half-fill a thermos flask with boiling water and top up with lentils. Two hours later they are cooked! Beat that for energy efficiency?

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5. 5. thermanson 05:48 PM 10/20/09

   Although there's no undervaluing the sacrifice of those who have chosen to go without refrigeration, I think the biggest area for improvement lies within commercial refrigeration. Obviously supermarkets can't go without refrigerators, but that doesn't mean they can't make them more environmentally friendly and efficient. Here's an article I read on some primary techniques of green refrigeration: http://www.laurus.edu/green_refrigeration_article.asp

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6. 6. thermanson in reply to thermanson 05:53 PM 10/20/09

   <a href=" http://www.laurus.edu/green_refrigeration_article.asp">green refrigeration article</a>

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