Domestic refrigerators and freezers are ubiquitous appliances in the kitchen and often a laundry, garage or home office. By connecting to the way, we shop, cook, eat, and work, they facilitate our current lifestyles.
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Despite advances in technology, there is still plenty of scope to cut operating costs and environmental impacts of food storage. We need a better understanding of how our use of cold storage has evolved along with our changing practices and fridge designs, especially when it comes to food waste and climate impacts.
In 2020, typical carbon emissions from a household’s fridges and freezers were around three quarters of a tonne each year, according to the Residential Baseline Study. Ongoing reductions in emission intensity of electricity are reducing these emissions, though the continuous operation of fridges means they use a lot of electricity when coal and gas provide a large share of electricity and high carbon emissions.
Moreover, food waste is of increasing concern in the context of climate change and diminishing biodiversity. It is an endemic issue in Australia. The Australian National Food Waste Strategy Baseline has identified that nearly 300 kilograms of food is wasted in Australia per person per year. This equates to a total of 7.3 million tonnes of food, of which households generate 34 per cent. Approximately 92 per cent of household food waste goes directly to landfill, which has significant environmental consequences – over 800 kilograms of carbon emissions per person. Reducing this waste could save the average family between $2200 and $3800 per year.
A recent RMIT field study on refrigerators revealed that 17 per cent of the fridges monitored were either too cold or too warm. Both these conditions can lead to food waste. Higher temperatures allow harmful bacteria to develop, and at low temperatures, many food items freeze and are rendered unusable. Moreover, excessive use of freezers to store food or overloading fridges also increases energy consumption, as well as potential food waste when some items lay forgotten or the quality of food decreases. We found that many householders were unaware temperatures varied in different parts of their fridges, including shelves on doors that are often warmer. They tended not to blame the fridge temperature when food had to be discarded.
The increase in prices of essential commodities at the time of data collection had made many householders thrifty and conscious about food waste. Interestingly, even being more conscious about food waste did not prevent it from happening. More holistic and in-depth interventions are needed.
The best 6-star family fridges on the market today use around 250 kilowatts an hour a year, while 2 stars use almost twice as much. A lot of reasonably modern fridges use around 400 kWh or more. Older fridges might use around 600 kWh, and faulty old fridges might use over 1000 kWh.
But most people keep a fridge for 10-15 years, so you are locking yourself into about $700 more with the inefficient product, and even more if its efficiency deteriorates over time.
Our recommendations to reduce food waste and rethink our relationship with refrigerators and fridges are premised on our finding that merely informing householders about food waste is not sufficient to bring about change in everyday routines and activities. Interventions that enable change within people’s complex and interwoven lives are required. Current models of change, such as technology, policy and education campaigns, are not designed for these multiple, complex behaviours. Therefore, our recommendations in the report target key stakeholders, including policymakers, fridge/product designers and manufacturers, packaging companies, food and ready-to-eat retailers, peak bodies, and researchers.
Another finding indicated that there is a lot of confusion about how to store food and leftovers in the fridge. Integrating advice to create trust in a single authority that can provide tailored and specific advice as a one stop advice platform for the storage and use of stored products is needed. This would include a shared consumer-manufacturer responsibility to communicate the correct fridge temperature for optimum shelf life. Consideration of multicultural attributes of the population in advice on life of food and storage practices is necessary. For example, specific food items may be handled in different ways in different households.
Many of our participants noted the design of the fridge (deep, narrow shelves) prevented them from having a clear vision of their fridge, leading to forgetting some stored food items. Tailoring smart fridge technology and design to consumer practices of fridge and freezer use through co-design processes would mean that the onus for keeping the fridge organised and keeping the fridge at optimised temperatures would not solely fall on householders. The upkeep of the fridge might also mean that the management of a fridge through its life happens through its manufacturer’s continuous engagement with the product as well as government retrofit schemes such as the Victorian Energy upgrade programs.
Finally, we found that while freezers provided convenience, a just in time way to save food from waste, as well as saving householders money through bulk purchasing, they raised other issues, such as leftover and forgotten frozen food. Supporting reduced dependence on freezers as a societal goal may help reduce large energy bills as well as reduce food waste in some instances. However, this means that policies and programs encouraging urban planning strategies such as 15 minute cities for easy and affordable grocery shopping, regulating grocery price rises, and discouraging regular and non essential bulk buying may need to be designed and conceptualised as long term strategies.
