Did you know thereâs a secret climate killer... ..lurking in your kitchen? Refrigerators contain greenhouse gases more potent than CO2. Some are thousands of times worse! Released into the atmosphere, they accelerate global warming. And not only fridges, most appliances that keep things cool use these refrigerants. They also created the hole in the ozone layer. Thatâs why imitating these viral videos is a really bad idea. Managing refrigerants could do more to combat global warming than the combination of solar power on an industrial scale and over 100 times as many electric vehicles. So whatâs the correct way to dispose of an old fridge? And are there any alternatives to these secret climate killers? Letâs find out. First things first: why are these chemicals used to keep our food cold? I have this old freezer lying around â letâs see how it works. The cycle starts with the refrigerant piped into the freezer. Inside it traps any heat via the heat exchange coil mounted at the back. The refrigerant then flows out of the freezer and through a second coil where it releases its stored heat. Thatâs why the back of your fridge is always warm! Then the cycle starts again. But the properties that make refrigerants good at keeping things cool is exactly what why they are bad for the climate. âGreenhouse gases are essentially heat trapping gases.â Chadâs the lead researcher at Project Drawdown, an organization that measures and describes the most effective solutions to stopping global warming. âHydrofluorocarbons are what we currently have as the predominant form of refrigerant gases. They are hundreds to thousands of times more potent a gas than carbon dioxide. So, they're thousands of times better at trapping heat. And so that's why they make really good and effective refrigerants.â Cooling things down has always been tricky, even before we knew about global warming. It all started with ammonia, first used around 1850. But because it can make people faint, it was phased out of home appliances. Thatâs when âsaferâ, artificial options called F-gases were developed. The first generation of them were CFCs and HCFCs. âThereâs a place for all your food.â They didnât make people faint when they leaked out of faulty fridges, but it turned out they werenât safe for the atmosphere. In the 1980s, scientists noticed a giant hole in the atmosphereâs ozone layer, which protects us from the worst of the sunâs ultraviolet light. âBy tracking this imagery for the past nine years, they have discovered a trend. Each spring over Antarctica a hole in the ozone develops. And it has been getting larger year by year." They homed in on chlorine in the atmosphere from CFCs and HCFCs as the culprit. âWe could mobilize the political will required to agree on a strong ozone protocol.â So in an almost fairytale-like moment in 1987, countries from around the world signed the Montreal Protocol. It phased out the refrigerants that were destroying the ozone layer and replaced them with second-generation gases that donât: HFCs. The hole in the ozone layer is healing now though its size varies with global temperatures. Unfortunately, the public
stopped paying attention. And these second-generation refrigerants have turned out to be one of the biggest drivers of global warming. While HFCs don't contribute to the hole in the ozone layer, they do trap thousands of times more heat than CO2. Their effect is expressed in global warming potential, which is... âthe potency of a greenhouse gas over a specific period of time and in relation to CO2.â Paula was project leader of the Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of HFCs. As the planet warms, people use more coolant every year. In India, refrigerator purchases are projected to increase 60% from 2017 to 2022. The majority of them contain HFCs. So countries came together again in 2016 to ban these new refrigerants. The resulting Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol came into effect in 2019. Some countries, like EU members, are already using alternatives. In others the switch-over is slower. So what kind of alternatives are there? One category is a new type of synthetic refrigerant: HFOs. While HFCs have global warming potentials in the thousands, the new generation is under 10. But these might affect the environment in unforeseen ways. âHFCs were the fix for the previous set of refrigerants and now we realize there's another problem with HFCs, so we're moving to another generation of refrigerants over time.â Shikha is in charge of policy work related to cooling in India, for the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in Delhi. âMaybe we just need to go towards natural refrigerants because we still don't know what the lifecycle consequences of these new synthetic refrigerants are going to be.â Sheâs referring to concerns about HFOs. âHFO production is often connected to the production of side products and these can be toxic or damaging to [the] climate.â Philipp is deputy director of the circular economy branch of Environmental Action Germany. âAnd then the HFO itself, if it's released to the atmosphere, it can be after some time, it can turn into TFA, which is another compound which is quite persistent in the environment and where it's not exactly clear how damaging it is.â Meanwhile, we know natural options are more climate-friendly. Remember ammonia? It has a global warming potential of 0. My freezer contains a hydrocarbon, which has a global warming potential of three. Thereâs also carbon dioxide, which â by definition - has a global warming potential of one. Now, ammonia makes you faint, and hydrocarbons are flammable. But technology has improved significantly to address these issues and these gases have been in use in the EU since the mid-1990s. My freezer has never exploded. European Union legislation aims to cut HFC emissions by two-thirds by 2030. Thatâs equivalent to one billion return flights from Paris to New York. But the transition in Europe and around the world could be moving faster. One reason itâs not is cost: âWhen you replace gases, very few of them are retrofittable, so it's not that the existing equipment that you have, you canât just change the gas. If you just change the gas, your appliance is not going to work.â Also, the new generation of synthetic refrigerants are only made by certain chemical companies. Natural ones could be more widely produced. âThey keep on inventing a new solution that they 10 years later, you need to phase out because the business model, that's how they make profit instead of just going right away, leapfrog[ging] to natural refrigerants.â I spoke to a large refrigerant manufacturer about synthetic versus natural refrigerants for this piece, but afterwards they wouldnât let me use the interview. While waiting for less harmful refrigerants, 40% of the gas in Indian appliances escapes during maintenance. In the EU and US, 90% is released at the end of an applianceâs life, and thatâs why disposal is so important. Remember the guys that threw their fridge off the cliff? The Spanish police made them drag it back up and fined them âŹ45,000. So what can you do with an old appliance? If it still works, you can donate it to an NGO. If you need a new appliance, you can give the old one back to the manufacturer. Some producers accept old refrigerators even without the purchase of a new one. The other option is to recycle it. You can take your fridge and drop it at a recycling center, and they will send it on to a recycling plant. But this step isnât as straight forward as youâd think, even in recycling-loving Germany. âIf you look at the treatment of old refrigerators, we have a very big problem in Germany, because the recycling plants don't work according to [the] state of the art.â In fact, only 6 out of 20 recycling plants in Germany are licensed to recycle cooling and freezing appliances. âThere is still more than one million tonnes of avoidable carbon dioxide emissions, arising from not state of the art recycling of old fridges in Germany.â This is why both the switch to alternative refrigerants and legislation on recovering them are so important. Raising awareness is also key. âI don't think that sensibility exists about the connection of global warming with your air conditioners and your fridges and other applications yet.â So while weâre waiting for our fridges to stop becoming climate killers, remember, the worst thing you can do is dispose of them on the street. âIf you enjoyed this video, we have new ones every Friday. So donât forget to like and subscribe!â
i used to work at an auto repair facility. i cant tell you the amount of times customers have lost their shit when you tell them you can't "just add more freon"
if your car needs freon it's because the damn thing is leaking into the atmosphere burning holes in the ozone layer