The Bite:
Chill. Just reduce your fridge's energy use - easy with our five fridge energy tips. Should be music to your ears.
Does a glance at your electricity bills make your voice go falsetto?
11.12.2008
Submitted by tmeronek on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 1:23am.
The Benefits:
- Energy savings Gwyneth would approve of. Try these tips out with your current fridge to use 30% less energy (and possibly even less) to power it.
- More cash for concert merch. Opting for an Energy Star fridge, for example, can save you $55 per year.
Personally Speaking:
Being the eco-Samaritans we are, we do our part to up our SF office fridge's efficiency by keeping it full of organic booze.
Wanna Try:
- Fill It Up - your fridge and freezer are more efficient when full (just not so full that cold air can't circulate). And in a power outage, they'll hold the temp for twice as long as if they were half full.
- Use Glass for Storage - store your food in glass, which keeps it colder longer - and as we mentioned in #1, colder food means the fridge keeps its cool easier.
- Vacuum the Coils - a couple times a year, clean off the dust on the coils at the bottom of your fridge (usually hidden behind a removable panel near the fridge's base), since buildup makes the coils work a lot harder. You'll use up to 6% less energy. (Just unplug it so you don't fry yourself.)
- Move It - if your fridge is near a sunny window or your oven (and you can actually change the way your kitchen is set up), move it to a cooler spot; for every degree above 70 degrees surrounding your fridge, it'll use 2.5% more energy.
- Replace It - get an Energy Star-qualified fridge - they use at least 15% less energy than the current federal standard. Fridges with bottom- or top-mounted freezers use about 20% less than side-by-side models.
Cocktail Fact
Coldplay's Viva la Vida holds the record for the most (legal) downloads of any album.
Bang For The Bite
Not everyone can afford a new fridge, but if 10,000 Biters clean their coils regularly, in a year we'll save a collective $180,000.
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