ENERGY SAVING IDEAS: Your Older Fridge: An Energy Hog?

Here’s an idea many families can warm to: You may be able to save money and energy with a new refrigerator.

It’s chilling but true: If your refrigerator was manufactured before 1993, it could be using more than twice as much energy as a new energy-efficient model and be costing you over $100 a year to run.

On the energy bright side, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says that if all the refrigerators bought this year met the new ENERGY STAR® criteria, it would save enough energy to light all the homes in Washington, D.C. for over 20 months. In fact, the next generation of such refrigerators is so efficient that the average one uses less energy in a year than a 60-watt lightbulb left on all year.

To earn the designation, refrigerators are required to be 20 percent more efficient than the minimum federal standard.

Video Contest

To further encourage people to recycle their old fridges and to purchase qualified units, the DOE is leading the first nationwide refrigerator recycling initiative. The Recycle My Old Fridge campaign is a national call to recycle older, inefficient refrigerators and for consumers to tell their stories about recycling their older refrigerators and encourage others to do the same. Participants can submit one-minute videos between April 28 and July 28, 2008, which will be posted on YouTube™. The videos will be voted on at the campaign’s Web site, and up to three participants will be selected as winners and come to Washington, D.C., to participate in an awards ceremony.

Learn More

To learn more, visit www.energystar.gov and www.RecycleMyOldFridge.com. For more information on how to recycle your old refrigerator, visit the Steel Recycling Institute’s Web site, www.recycle-steel.org.

If you have an older refrigerator, it could be costing you over $100 a year to run.

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