H&G ADVICE
172 / AUSTRALIAN HOUSE & GARDEN
Photograph from Alamy.H
ere’s a cautionary tale for anyone
who’s ever thought having a
second fridge in the garage
might be handy. A supermarket had a ‘buy
two for the price of one’ offer on legs of
lamb: one shopper thought this sounded
like a good deal, so she bought the two
legs of lamb for $30. She cooked one,
and put the other in the freezer of her
second fridge/freezer in the garage.
“Three months later, when she went to
defrost it, that second leg of lamb alone
had cost her about $75 in electricity,” says
Rene Hendriksen, manager of Fridge
Buyback, a residential energy-saving
program based in Sydney. “Running a
second fridge typically adds an average of
$300 to your power bill and contributes
one tonne of carbon pollution each year.”
Fridge Buyback works with 51 councils
in NSW to pick up old fridges and pay
small rebates (conditions apply), before
safely disposing of the gases in old fridges
and recycling the metals and other
materials from the fridge. There is a
similar program operating in the ACT.“Councils and governments are
encouraging people to reduce their
household power usage. Dispensing with a
second fridge is one of the most effective
ways to do this,” says Hendriksen. While
the buyback program only pays $15, this
can be enough incentive for people to
finally do away with that extra fridge.
Since the buyback program began in
NSW in 2008, more than 54,000 fridges
have been reclaimed and recycled. “That
means $16.2 million worth of energy a
year is not being used by those fridges,”
says Hendriksen. “And 437,000 tonnes of
greenhouse gases have not been emitted.”
Older fridges can cost three times as
much to run as today’s more efficient
models, he says. “An old fridge would cost
more to operate even if it was as-new but
often the seals are lousy as well, and if it’s
being kept in a hot location it will become
even more inefficient. You can spend in
the thousands of dollars running a
second fridge.” #^
NSW: http://www.fridgebuyback.com.au. ACT:
http://www.actewagl.com.au/fridgebuyback.Ditch the second fridge and you’ll save a significant
amount of money and power, writes Sarah Pickette.
the green house
playing it cool
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