Andy Wimbush is nef‘s Communications Assistant and blogmaster.
Someone fairly prolific in the radical green movement – I forget who exactly – once said that the refrigerator was the sign of a truly decadent society.
At first, this strikes me as remarkably unfair to the fridge. If anything, the poor old fridge seems like the most thrifty and considerate of kitchen appliances. It stretches out the lifetime of our food, thus cutting down our wastage and preventing us from taking daily trips to the shop. Freezing food is especially useful in this regard. I recently stumbled across a handy list of fifty tips for reducing food waste, and a good proportion of them suggest freezing bits of food that you might otherwise throw away. Day-old bread can be frozen for when you need breadcrumbs. Fresh herbs can be frozen in ice-cubes and then tossed into soups. Even the tops of carrots, peppers and onions can be frozen for creating vegetable stock later on.
But last week, I started using the Ration Me Up Carbon Ration Book, produced by the Ministry of Trying to Do Something About It for nef‘s event, The Bigger Picture: Festival of Interdependence. Running a fridge 24/7 takes up a greedy 15% of my monthly ration: 6 out of 39 coupons. That’s the same as travelling 200 miles on a train. The fridge no longer looks like such a sensible idea.
There is, apparently, a small contingent of very dedicated green activists who’ve cut out their fridge entirely. An alternative solution might be to only use the fridge in the summer, and simply store perishable food outside during the winter.
A zeer pot in use: sand in the outer pot, food in the middle one. Photo via Practical Action.
More ingenious is the “zeer pot” clay fridge, a very simple technology increasingly being used by people in India and sub-Saharan Africa to preserve food. It consists of a two clay bowls, one inside the other. The gap between the bowls is filled sand and food is put into the inner bowl. The idea is that you then pour water over the sand, the water evapourates slowly and thus cools the food. According to development organisation Practical Action, a zeer pot can extend the shelf-life of vegetables from a matter of days to as much as three or four weeks. All without any electricity. They have an excellent guide to making your own zeer pot, if any of you decide you’d rather spend your carbon rations on watching TV or travelling around.
Of course, the simplest solution is to share the damned thing. A fridge which is empty uses more power than one which is full, so it makes sense to have your fridge stocked with other people’s food. (Apparently, you can even save energy by padding out your fridge with carrier bags full of newspaper!) By sharing my fridge usage with the three other people I live with, I only need to stick one and a half coupons onto my ration book.
The same principle goes for heating, lighting, cooking and buying new stuff. If we’re prepared to share, we can live within our carbon rations without having to sacrifice too many creature comforts.
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8 comments
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9 November, 2009 at 2:34 pm
tim mitchell
I think I’m going to get one of those canvas hanging larders that you’d use for camping.
Anything that’s in the fridge can go in there, this time of year out in the yard. Could even hang it out of a window, if you’re not a ground floor dweller!
We started our carbon ration book this morning. Here goes!.
11 November, 2009 at 3:40 pm
wewayiyu
Have I missed something here?
I picked up my ration book at the festival and was instantly attracted to the idea, taking a whole stack thinking to hand out to friends and family. But then on closer inspection, the first thing that jumps out at me is the 1/2 hr / day of PC time.
I’m an average working-Jane and my 5 day a week, 9 to 5 job as per rest of millions of people means I’m sitting here topping up my numbers and it just doesn’t make sense.
1/2 hour (in a conservative) 7 hour working day, 21 working days a month = 73.5 ration coupons already. Before I’ve bathed, eaten, travelled anywhere, done anything else?
Is my rations really meant to cover both my work life and personal?
11 November, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Andy Wimbush
I’m told that the “1/2 hr” means “between one and two hours”, as opposed to 30 minutes. Also the “/ day” means “per day”. So, if you work 7 hours a day at a computer, 5 days a week, that averages out at around 5 hours a day. So you’d 3 or 4 coupons to cover your PC usage at work for the month.
Correct me if I’ve got my maths wrong, but hopefully that sounds more palatable. Like you, I work for seven hours a day at my PC, so let’s hope I’ve got it right!
12 November, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Gavin
Hi Andy
Reading your maths logic, 4 coupons would cover a max of 8 hours PC usage.
This is a day, not a month surely? I am confused!
Gavin
13 November, 2009 at 10:55 am
Andy Wimbush
Gavin, it would cover a max of 8 hours per day. “1/2 hr / day” means “using the computer for between one and two hours a day, for the duration of a month”. Since I use my computer for on average five hours a day, I’d need about three or four of these coupons.
Does that make any more sense?
Andy
14 December, 2009 at 10:00 am
Michael
“Running a fridge 24/7 takes up a greedy 15% of my monthly ration: 6 out of 39 coupons”
“An alternative solution might be to only use the fridge in the summer, and simply store perishable food outside during the winter.”
But the waste that the fridge produces is heat right? and you need to keep your home warm in Winter, right? (same argument goes for incandescent light bulbs)
21 January, 2010 at 9:12 am
Anthony Maturin
Re fridges – it seems to me that few of us have rhe smallest inkling of how basic life is likely to be for our descendents within a generation or two. But there are two levels to this issue, one of which is the possible pleasantness of the electo-gadget-less lifestyle. Did your grandmother have a fridge? And please note that this is not negative and back to the dark ages thinking, but a search for satisfying and viable living standards in a crowded, and probably extremely violent future world.
Anthony.
27 May, 2010 at 11:32 am
Richard
Back in the ’60s my parents had a small ‘cupboard’ made out of a chalky material with a depression in the top which you kept topped up with water. They used it as a fridge when camping. Much more portable than a Zeer Pot, but it worked on the same principle.
I’d be interested to see someone measure the temperature inside and outside a Zeer Pot to get a feel for how much cooling you can get. I suspect it works a lot better in a low humidity environment. In those situations, when storing vegetables, the humidity in the inner pot will probably also be a big help in keeping the veg in good condition. I don’t think it would be so much help for storing, for example, meat, milk or vaccines.
It’s always seemed daft in northern European winters to burn fuel to heat your house, then burn more to cool a space inside the warm house to store food. My grandmother had a fridge (from the ’50s anyway) but she also had a larder – a room on the shaded side of the house with plenty of outside ventilation. Time to revive the larder?