Ozone Hole Still With Us for Next 60 Years
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 12.14.05
There once was a meeting, in Montreal, when the world came together, and managed to agree to act as one for the betterment of the planet. It wasn’t last week. It was last century. 1987 to be more precise. When we decided chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were contributors to the growing hole in the ozone layer and we should phase them out. Despite this landmark agreement, scientists at Australia’s CSIRO have just announced that this years hole over the Antarctic was the “fourth largest since measurements began in 1979.” And their brethren in the States now believe the hole “will not shrink to 1980 dimensions until 2065, 15 years later than previously estimated.” One of the culprits that fingers are being pointed at, is old fridges made with CFC refrigerants prior to the phase out. So this is one of those exceptions to the Treehugger rule that: extending the life of an existing product is better than buying new. (Assuming, of course, that your old coolbox has its CFC’s extracted before it becomes scrap metal.) Story from the ::Sydney Morning Herald.
Update: Whoops, owing to my perennial problem of writing posts with a sleep deprived brain, I initially had that little rule back-to-front. Now reads correctly.
One other thing, new fridges tend to be much more energy efficent than those made even 10 years ago. As the article says, please dispose of any old units properly.