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Some people have decided the refrigerator is absurd and wasteful

No appliance seems more absurd in Chicago, in the winter, than the refrigerator. It hums and wiggles and burns electricity to preserve a pocket of cold inside of the pocket of heat that another appliance, the heater, is humming and wiggling and burning to create against the freezing air outside. Food and drink chill much more quickly if you just set them outside for a moment.

Some people have decided the refrigerator is absurd and wasteful enough that they've decided to give up on it entirely. And not just in Chicago in the winter.

“It seems wasteful to me to use even an Energy Star-rated fridge, because I’m getting along fine without one,” Rachel Muston, a Canadian government worker in Ottawa, told the New York Times.

People who aren't ready to give up a refrigerator can still make a dent in their carbon footprint by replacing an old one. The refrigerator works day and night to keep food cool, but according to the National Resources Defense Council, it may do more than any other appliance to keep the planet hot.

New refrigerators use about 75 percent less energy than refrigerators manufactured in the 1970s, according to the NRDC. They use 40 percent less than those manufactured in 2000, before the U.S. implemented new efficiency standards. By replacing an old refrigerator, consumers can prevent 521 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Homeowners trying to help the environment by replacing old power-hungry appliances have been puzzled by the same question that has hampered efforts to build energy-saving homes and develop cleaner biofuels — whether the “embodied energy” required to manufacture and deliver an innovation outweighs the energy it saves.

Refrigerators represent a lot of embodied energy — one expert estimates that 20 percent of a refrigerator’s carbon emission occurs during manufacture and delivery, before a consumer ever plugs it in. But even that more complicated calculus has improved in recent years. A study published in Appliance magazine in 2006 shows that a refrigerator manufactured in 2005 uses 78 percent less energy in its entire lifetime, including manufacture and delivery, than one manufactured in 1990. Refrigerators typically last 15 to 25 years, promising net carbon savings in the long run.

The financial savings are easier to calculate. The NRDC estimates a new Energy Star refrigerator can save consumers $100 a year if it replaces a "vintage model" from the 1980s.

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