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First Truly “Green-Friendly” Refrigerator |
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By Marcela Valente*
A new kind of refrigerator is being built in Argentina that will replace ozone-depleting refrigerants with non-polluting hydrocarbon gases. The clean technology, which originated in Europe, is being used in South America for the first time.
BUENOS AIRES – By year-end, a small company in Argentina will put a new kind of refrigerator on the market, which will go down in history as the first in South America to operate without damaging the ozone layer or contributing to global warming.
The model has been used in Europe for nearly a decade. But the transnational corporations that manufacture the refrigerators there have been reluctant to transfer production of the new refrigerators to the Americas.
Firms in Argentina and other Latin American countries have attempted to develop products using the technology, but without success until this year, when the goal was achieved by Autosal, a company with 180 employees that produces merchandise carrying the Columbia and Koh-i-noor brand-names.
The price and the traditional style and white color of the refrigerators will remain the same. The revolutionary aspect of the units is that they use a new refrigerant, isobutane, to replace the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that destroy the ozone layer that protects life on earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
Nor do the new refrigerators use hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), which do not deplete the ozone layer but are greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Isobutane is a gas from the family of the hydrocarbons that has the approval of the Montreal Protocol, the international agreement aimed at eliminating ozone-depleting gases.
HCFCs were seen as a step forward from CFCs, until they were found to aggravate global warming. Isobutane, on the other hand, passes muster with the Kyoto Protocol , the international treaty aimed at reducing emissions of gases that contribute to climate change, which has not yet gone into effect.
The new model also replaces hydrofluorocarbon (HFC), used as a foaming agent in insulation, with cyclopentane, another hydrocarbon gas.
Thus, the new units meet the requirements of both the Montreal and Kyoto protocols, as do most refrigerators sold today in Europe.
The world’s first climate and ozone safe refrigerator technology replacing CFCs and HCFCs with hydrocarbon gases was developed in the early 1990s by the international environmental organization Greenpeace, which named the new technology “greenfreeze”. To ensure maximum diffusion, it did not patent the invention.
The idea was initially rejected by Germany’s leading refrigerator manufacturers, which had just invested in replacing CFCs with HCFCs. The companies also alleged safety reasons, since the hydrocarbon gases are flammable.
But a company on the verge of bankruptcy, located in the former East Germany, embraced the idea, the head of Greenpeace International’s Renewable Solutions Campaign in Argentina, Mariana Walter, told Tierramérica.
The German company, Foron, saw its sales increase considerably almost overnight, and within a few months, Germany’s major manufacturers began to convert their plants to incorporate the new technology, under pressure from consumer demand.
Transnational corporations like Whirlpool, Bosch and Electrolux began to produce refrigerators employing the new green technology in Europe, but not in the Americas.
Not even the most-developed countries in the hemisphere, the United States and Canada, have adopted the new technology, which would require extra investment.
Only Cuba, unable to import chemical refrigerants due to the four-decade U.S. embargo, is manufacturing refrigerators using hydrocarbon gases.
Several other Argentine manufacturers tried to adapt their factories to the new green technology, but their attempts ended in failure.
“Of the four firms that set out on the new endeavor, three went under,” said Walter. Only Autosal, in the northeastern province of San Luis, which supplies 12 percent of the national market, was left.
Up to now, the company has been selling 12,000 units a year. But it hopes to sell 5,000 of the new units a month, Autosal’s marketing director, Guillermo Moro, told Tierramérica.
The firm invested 1.5 million dollars in the reconversion process, including 800,000 dollars that came from the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund created to help developing countries meet the target of eliminating CFCs by 2010.
According to Moro, the safety measures that must be adopted in the manufacturing of appliances using isobutane and cyclopentane are no greater than those required for producing traditional refrigerators. “We install detectors capable of detecting any gas leak,” said the executive.
Although the new units are slightly more expensive to produce, the company decided to absorb the difference in cost to order to hold prices steady.
The new clean technology will not be publicized by the company. “We are putting it out on the market practically at the end of the refrigerator-buying season (from October to January), which is not a good time to launch an advertising campaign. Maybe next year,” said Moro.
Greenpeace, however, will take on the task of publicizing the new product. “This is a key development for opening up the game in the region to other companies that want to join in and use this technology,” said Walter.
Environmentalists hope to see a repeat of what happened in Germany: that consumers in Argentina - and other countries in Latin America - will begin to demand refrigerators using the new green technology.
* The writer is an IPS correspondent.
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