I was at a sustainable energy conference yesterday and someone threw out this statistic: From 1974 to 2003, the average refrigerator volume increased from 17.5 to 22.5 cubic feet. (Sorry, I don’t have a link right now.)
On the plus side, refrigerators’ energy efficiency has increased by 74 percent. The average 1974 ‘fridge used 1825 kwh/year, compared to 476 kwh in 2003.
Since we can have larger refrigerators that use less energy, most people do. From a food waste perspective, that leads to one small problem: nobody likes an empty ‘fridge. I would guess that a great deal of food waste comes because we feel the need to keep our refrigerators stocked.
This “Full Cupboard Effect” compels us to buy more food than is possible to eat before it goes bad. Do you think your ‘fridge size affects how you shop? Let me know what you think of this theory.
Comments
8 responses to “Fridges Fingered”
I have a big fridge. When my previous one died, I spent some time trying to decide between not replacing it, buying the smallest “dorm” fridge I could find, or getting a big one.
I decided that I liked having cold water available, and that it would be inconvenient to prepare smaller portions of red pasta sauce on demand than to store it. So going without was off the table.
A dorm fridge would satisfy the two needs I had identified, but would be restrictive in the long run because it limited possibilities. I eventually decided that bigger was better, and I went big. In the long run, it has helped me. If I make stock in my biggest pan, I can refrigerate it, and I still have room for my second biggest pan.
I got one with a bottom freezer, and I really like it. At first, I kept it filled with a rubbermaid tub full of water, an iron sphere the size of a volleyball, and my iron. Over time, I’ve replaced those things with frozen vegetables.
My fridge is most often empty. People comment on it because they find it bizarre that I have so little food in it. I’m shocked when I open other peoples and discover that it is packed so full of food that nothing new will fit. I can’t imagine that anyone would ever eat that much food, and I see them keep buying new food despite already having so much.
Yeah, I’ve always been a full-fridge sort of person, which has caused a lot of my food wasting. My fridge gets so clogged up and disorganized, food rots in the back corners without me even realizing it’s there.
Since I’ve been working on reducing my waste, my fridge has been a lot emptier, which makes waste management more, well, manageable!
Glad to hear you’ve both put so much thought into your refrigerators. That, more than its size, seems to bring less waste.
I hadn’t thought of the waste-reducing possibilities that a big fridge brings. Of course, all tools are only as good as their users.
When I lived in New Zealand I made a friend who commented that when she visited the US she couldn’t believe how much food Americans keep in their house. It seemed to her that every American household maintained an entire grocery store in their kitchen, or that we’re always preparing for an emergency food shortage.
It’s interesting to think about habits that we take for granted as ‘normal’ and consider how they lead to unintended side effects. I think this conversation ties right into non-food issues. American culture is all about excess, surplus, plenty, more, more, more. It’s a constant force in our lives. We are driven to have as much (of anything and everything) as we can – more is always better. That attitude seems destined to lead to waste. And to some extent, I think most people think waste is an acceptable side effect of living “comfortably.”
Partly we stock a lot of food because we live so far from the grocery store. Then most of us drive, so we can buy more, and the trip takes time, so we want fewer trips.
Also we work a lot more hours than kiwis (and most other first-world people) – now that I work full time, I plan meals to minimize shopping as much as anything else, and buy everything at once for a week or two.
We have a huge fridge because when we bought the fridge we were a five-adult household that got a bushel of CSA produce every week.
Now the fridge is half full of gallon jugs of water – saves energy, takes up space, prevents small containers getting lost at the back to rot.
This is an interesting theory with great “face validity.” I definitely fall into the trap of the Full Cupboard Effect. It feels like money well spent when the fridge is full. On the flip side, I wind up thinking “What did we spend our money on?” when the grocery bill is high but the fridge looks less than full.
Related to the money angle, we often shop at Costco to save some bucks. However, some of that money (and food) goes to waste when we buy the requisite large quantities of fresh food. Costco is great for non-perishables (granola bars, for example) but less useful for fresh items (bananas, hummus, etc.)
I guess the moral of the story is that I should look in the cabinets rather than the refrigerator when judging the merits of our efforts to get more bang for our food buck.
I would rather look into my fridge and see the shelves. When it’s full, it’s more difficult to see and utilize what’s in there. Most Americans
eat more calories than needed, to power their
bodies through each day. And nothing irks me more than to watch people in the produce section pick over the selections, looking for the “perfect”
piece. That is just adding to the bruises that normally happen. Back in the 80’s, my husband coined the term, “Russian apples”. They were bruised and brown, but it the people in Russia
were glad to have that to choose from. And I know that all over the world, there are still people who would give anything to have a “Russian-
apple”. Americans have a entitlement thing. There will come a day (sooner than we think) when we too, will be glad to have anything to fill that gnawing in our tummies.
The small fridge cost the same price as the big one, and I bought it anyway!
I have been so grateful to have a small fridge, becaue I know I would fill it up every week, and then empty most of it into the trash.