While the populace fight the deteriorating environment by carpooling, hybrid cars, and cutting down on aerosol cans, Ben & Jerrys has been revolutionizing the way they freeze their resources by creating the Cleaner Greener Freezer. In fall 2008, B&Js began a trial run of new hydrocarbon (HC) freezers in the Boston and DC areas, awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Once approved, they plan on making these freezers standard in the United States.
Whats wrong with what theyve got? Well, the current freezing technology uses hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs) which Greenpeace has determined to be among the F-gasses that they claim have been responsible for 17% of global warming pollution and are the worst greenhouse gases youve never heard of. To illustrate its global warming effect, one ton of this gas in the atmosphere is equivalent to 3,200 tons of carbon dioxide and under normal use, HFC freezers are leaking a little bit every day.
The solution is the use of the HC freezer, which keeps Chunky Monkey and Phish Food just as frozen, but is 10% more energy efficient and has no impact on the ozone! It works just like a regular freezer, only with a different kind of gas being compressed and expanded through tubing. It is a continuous process through which no gas should be lost. This technology is already being used outside the US, but cant be fully integrated into the States until it passes the EPAs evaluation process called SNAP (Significant New Alternatives Policy).
In the meantime, you can visit one of the Ben & Jerrys locations that are already testing HC freezers and find out about the effects of F-gasses and other companies supporting alternatives on the Greenpeace website.
