When we bought our house in December 2006, there was a surprise in the garage: the former owners had left us a huge old chest freezer.
Now, Jak and I had a chest freezer already, a smaller model we’d bought at Costco about five years earlier. So this one was a bit superfluous, more than our family of two-and-sometimes-four needed. In the course of the move, however, it was convenient to move our frozen food into the windfall freezer temporarily while our original freezer was in transit.
‘Temporarily’ lasted, as it so often does, almost two and a half years. Last month we finally got around to rearranging the garage and transferring everything to the smaller freezer. I assumed that doing so would save us money — older & bigger versus newer & smaller seemed a no-brainer — but had no actual evidence.
With the model numbers of the two freezers and the kWh cost of local electricity from our bill, today I was able to use the government’s EnergyStar calculator to determine the exact difference:
- 1988 Kenmore 15.8cf freezer: $59.10 per year
- 2001 GE 7.2cf freezer: $24.55 per year
Savings: $34.55 per year, or about $2.88 a month.
(We have some of the country’s cheapest electricity here in Seattle; if we lived in New York, where it’s most expensive, the annual cost difference would be about $80.) I prefer to think of this as $34 we’re going to save every year from now on, rather than $86 we spent needlessly by procrastinating this task since moving in. Ahem.
There’s one more factor, though, that’s not as easy to calculate: with twice the freezer room my tendency was to buy extra food to fill it, which I then often lost in the depths, buried under piles of other food, until it was freezer-burned beyond all palatability. Or I would buy a ginormous bag of frozen peas at Costco, only to excavate a prior unopened bag from the bottom. (I use fresh produce as much as possible, so it can take us half a year to go through a single large bag of frozen vegetables. Having two such bags is just a waste.)
In the month since making the switch, I’ve already seen improvements in frozen-food turnover efficiency. I still think I need a better record-keeping system for both fridge and freezer though; I’ll work on that!
The EnergyStar calculator also tells you how much you’d save in electricity by buying a new freezer that meets current EnergyStar specs. In our case, this is a mere $7 per year — not a patch on the cost of a replacement, not that we were considering one anyway.
I am going to resell the windfall freezer, once I have an afternoon to spend cleaning it out. For someone with no second freezer at all, it could be a real bargain — especially if they have a large family or are carnivores!
(Photos by jonner and Squiggle.)
I made a run to Safeway last night for sale produce: blueberries at $2.50/lb, tomatoes at $1.50/lb, summer squash and lettuce at $1.00. (I love summer.) At the checkout I put my nylon bag at the front of the conveyor belt, then unloaded my groceries.
The checker gingerly picked up the turquoise cloth and dropped it again as though it had slimed him. “What is this?”
I blinked. “It’s a bag? … For the …” I waved at the groceries.
He looked at it again. “Oh! Sorry.”
Bemused, I busied myself with the payment pad and watched the totals as he rang up the groceries. Corrected him on the type of lettuce (red leaf, which was on sale, rather than butter, which was not). Signed the electronic pad and moved down to pick up my groceries …
Which were packed into three plastic bags. Along with the nylon bag that I’d brought.
At this point, I snapped a little. “Um, the whole point here was to not use the plastic bags,” I growled at the bagger, while extricating my cloth bag.
“Oh! Sorry.” Together we repacked all three bags’ worth into my single reusable one. He tossed the plastic bags to the side and began packing new ones for the next customer, and I winced, realizing that my environmental diligence had resulted in zero effect.
To be fair, I’ve been exclusively bringing my own bags to the grocery for three months, and this is the first time I’ve been met with such utter incomprehension. I thought the timing was ironic, since yesterday the Seattle City Council approved a controversial twenty-cent disposable bag fee.
Starting January 1, shoppers will be charged twenty cents for every plastic or paper bag they carry out of a grocery or drug store. This news thrilled me.
That might seem like a contradiction — why would someone concerned with saving money support a new expense? — but it’s core to my philosophy. I love bargains but have never espoused Frugality Uber Alles; I have a vivid environmentalist streak and a strong compulsion to do the right thing.
But even that compulsion is not always enough to battle inertia. I’ve known for years that both plastic and paper bags pose environmental problems, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I finally got off my butt and purchased a functional alternative.
Many grocery stores already offer a few pennies’ rebate for bringing your own bag, but it’s not really enough to matter. (I was amused to note that I received three cents’ credit for bringing my one large bag, when apparently I was saving them three plastic bags.)
En masse, people are creatures of habit who aren’t motivated by long-term benefits. It’s not pretty, but it’s true. Most of us have to be given clear, short-term incentives to embrace change. And it works.
From the New York Times:
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
In six months, cloth bags will be the norm here in Seattle, not a weird exception that baffles grocery employees. I think that’s a huge victory, more than worth the expense.
(You can read details of the bag fee at the Seattle PI and Seattle Times.)
(Photo by taberandrew.)
