A comment on refrigeration and freezing to a zero-waste blog
I responded to a blog I follow on zero waste cooking and didn’t think much of the response. I’ll give the context then what I wrote, then the author’s response.
Context: The author wrote about how to use freezers to reduce food waste. I know from hands-on practical experience that home refrigerators and freezers may help leftovers from a given meal from going bad, but systemically, they lead to more food waste, less fresh food, higher costs, less availability of fresh produce, and other effects that are the opposite of the intended effects.
For more background, I wrote more in We think appliances are to save labor, but General Electric created them to grow demand for electricity, hence General “Electric”.
My response to the post:
After reading that most of the world uses less refrigeration than us, and has healthier, fresher, tastier food, and they waste less, I noticed that my fridge and freezer was my biggest cause of pollution and depletion — that is, how I hurt people most.
I tried unplugging them, having no idea how to make it. I made it three months my first try, six my next, and made it the full year my third try so I kept going. Next month I begin my fifth year.
Hands-on practical experience led me to learn how to shop and prepare food differently, ferment, etc. Refrigeration causes many places losing access to fresh food or for it to cost more. I didn’t realize until I found an alternative that I was helping cause food deserts by not shopping fresh.
Like everyone, I live in a culture that makes it difficult to buy fresh and local, but the more I do, the more I find how to do it better. Equally important, the more I help improve access for others with less access than I have. At first I took more time to shop and prepare, but that was just inexperience. Hands-on practical experience taught me to save time and money.
The more I learn about the whole cold chain, the more I see how it impoverishes, deprives, pollutes, and depletes. The evidence doesn’t show healthier outcomes.
Refrigeration isn’t necessary. Nobody before about a century ago refrigerated. It seems like a good idea and has some applications, but if nearly everyone stopped refrigerating, we’d reduce waste, pollution, and depletion while improving access, health, local economies, flavor.
It seems counterintuitive, but experience belies “You have a powerful tool in your kitchen that reduces wasted food.” Experience has taught me that “You have a powerful tool in your kitchen that causes wasted food.”
The blog writer’s response
I agree with everything you’ve written here but people aren’t going to stop using refrigerators until they are forced to (by climate disruption; war; permanent, rather than rolling blackouts; whatever other fresh horrors are headed our way…). I have to teach people how to use reusable cloth produce bags when I give them away at the farmers’ market (sigh). And when I talk about my induction-electric range, despite its superiority in every way to a methane gas range, at least a few people will attack me. So I don’t have much hope that society will stop using refrigerators. But thank you for sharing what you do and showing us what it is possible.
My thoughts after
One of my thoughts after was how I was inspired by the “what we fucking need” quote I described in my blog post Inspirational environmental F-bomb. Why settle for what doesn’t work? Sadly, without hands-on practical experience, the author treats turning off the fridge as burdensome. (That post was prompted by my conversation with podcast guest Tony Hiss. It was a passage from his book, Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth).
My big thought was: She’s describing herself!
She’s describing their excuses not to act as an excuse not to act. I know from before I tried that I would have considered unplugging my fridge crazy, impossible to handle, and confusing, so I can’t blame her, but I didn’t have any local role models. She has me to know from experience that unplugging the fridge is liberating and friendly, not burdensome.
I’m surprised she didn’t try, or at least say that she’d think about trying. She’s robbing her readers of a role model and herself of fresher food and less food waste.
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