"This climate-safe freezer will keep pints of Chunky Monkey and
Cherry Garcia as cold as ever, but it's also going to help cool our
planet," said John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace
USA. "With hurricanes intensifying, tropical disease spreading, sea
levels rising, and polar bears going extinct, we need to make sure
that what cools our ice cream, drinks, and homes isn't also melting
the ice caps."
Greenpeace and F-gases: The
history
Greenpeace first started campaigning against
F-gases in 1986, when we started working to protect the ozone
layer. We took part in the negotiations to establish the Montreal
Protocol in 1987, a global treaty that regulates the use of
chlorfluorocarbons (CFCs), which were depleting the ozone layer. In
1992, when HFCs were being promoted as the "environmental
alternative" to CFCs, Greenpeace and many independent scientists
warned of the high global warming impact of these new
chemicals.
So we decided to prove that natural refrigeration and cooling
solutions not only existed, but were also potentially viable as
commodities. In 1992, we developed the GreenFreeze technology using
a natural refrigerant, the hydrocarbon isobutene. It was one of
Greenpeace's first direct market interventions.
Not only did we develop the GreenFreeze refrigerator, we
prototyped it and solicited some 70,000 orders for them in three
weeks, thereby convincing a German firm to manufacture and sell
them. The more than 300 million GreenFreeze refrigerators in the
world today make up approximately 40% of the 80 million
refrigerators produced annually. Hydrocarbon technology dominates
the domestic refrigeration markets of Europe and is prominent in
the markets of Japan and China, but it is conspicuously absent in
North American markets due to obsolete regulatory obstacles.
To bring further attention to the issue of HFCs' impact on
global warming, Greenpeace challenged the major corporate sponsors
of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, to refrain from
using HFC-based cooling. This push for natural refrigerant
solutions was so successful that in 2004 three of those sponsors --
Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Unilever -- launched the Refrigerants,
Naturally! global initiative in cooperation with Greenpeace and
the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The goal of
Refrigerants, Naturally! is to phase out the use of HFCs in the
participating companies' extensive fleets of point-of-sale cooling
equipment such as vending machines, display cabinets, and ice cream
freezers.
Other companies must follow Ben &
Jerry's lead
With the announcement on Sept. 29th, Ben & Jerry's, a
division of Unilever that has 300,000 hydrocarbon coolers deployed
internationally, brought climate-friendly coolers to the US for the
first time ever. Unilever has received a trial "market test"
allowanace from the EPA, which has to approve any new chemicals
used for refrigeration, and has received a safety approval from
Underwriters Laboratories. In addition to the Cleaner Greener
Freezers using a safer refrigerant chemical, they are also more
energy efficient than their counterparts that use HFCs.
As global warming grows more dire a crisis by the day, it
becomes more and more urgent that we drastically reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions. Given F-gases' significant contribution
to global warming and the fact that natural refrigerants are ready
to go, there is no excuse for the United States to continue
ignoring this viable solution to the most severe environmental
crisis of our time.
Ben & Jerry's engineer Pete Gosselin is optimistic about the
future of natural refrigerants in the US, saying of his company's
decision to roll out the Cleaner Greener Freezer, "It's one small
step for our business, and a giant leap for opening the door to
prove that a more environmentally benign refrigeration technology
could work in the U.S. market."
Says Greenpeace Solutions Director, Amy Larkin: "Now it's up to
other companies to follow Ben & Jerry's lead and make
climate-safe refrigeration as standard in the United States as it
is elsewhere. This should be the low-hanging fruit of our efforts
to stave off catastrophic climate change."