By James Reinl, Social Affairs Correspondent, For Dailymail.Com
First, they came for our gas guzzlers and Caribbean getaways.
Then, climate activists wanted us to stop eating burgers and ban gas stoves.
Next, it seems, they’re coming for our refrigerators.
That, at least, is according to climate researcher Nicola Twilley, who says fridges in family kitchens hurt the environment.
Her new book, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, makes the case against the humble household fridge.
It also takes aim at the system of ‘cold chain’ storage that keeps food chilly until it reaches our local supermarket.
‘Food waste is often touted as the reason to build a cold chain,’ Twilley told Bloomberg.
‘The problem is that in the developed world, we are throwing away 30 to 40 percent of our food at the retail and consumer end.’
Twilley says it’s become too easy to drive to Walmart and load up on groceries that fill our fridges — and often just sits there, forgotten about, slowly rotting as we order take-out pizza.
‘The abundance that refrigeration has given us has translated into a sort of lack of care, a willingness to waste,’ she says.
‘The food is so plentiful and so cheap that people would rather go and buy something else.’
As a result, the typical US household has become dependent on their fridges.
The average household fridge in the US is opened an average of 107 times a day, Twilley found.
In the US, total annual food waste adds up to some 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
That’s equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.
The cold storage chain also uses cooled trucks and cavernous, chilly warehouses that sap power grids.
…
Twilley’s concerns are supported by the climate policies of the Biden administration.
John Kerry, US Special Envoy for Climate, late last year committed to slashing emissions from refrigerators, air conditioning units and other cooling-related products in the battle against man-made global warming.
Kerry signed the US up to the Global Cooling Pledge, which commits nations to cut their cooling-related emissions by at least 68 percent by 2050 compared to 2022 levels.
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