Leave it to Ben & Jerry’s to help lead the way in the battle against global warming. The iconic ice cream company has teamed up with Greenpeace to bring the first climate-safe freezer to America. Ben & Jerry’s calls it the Cleaner Greener Freezer. The new freezer uses alternative refrigerants that, unlike current freezer gases, do not contribute to global warming. It uses no hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a potent greenhouse gas that has 1,400 times the global warming impact of CO2.
HFCs and other fluorinated gases are together responsible for 17% of global warming pollution in the atmosphere, according to website cleantechnica.com.
Hydrocarbon (HC) freezer technology has been around for several years and has been installed in millions of refrigerators throughout the world. But it wasn’t allowed in the U.S. until this year, when the EPA finally gave Ben & Jerry’s the green light to test 2,000 HC freezer units. Hopefully, the technology will soon be available to all U.S. refrigerator/freezer manufacturers.
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