Reefer Madness: The Footprint of Refrigerated Food

We often talk about the benefits of local, fresh food, but here is another we have not thought about before: the footprint of refrigeration. So many processed foods move from reefer trailer to refrigerated case in the store to the freezer in your house, what does that use in energy?

Over at the Ethicurian, Marc crunched the numbers and found that the entire food industry uses 1.02.10¹⁶ BTUs of energy per year, the equivalent of 1,760,000 barrels of oil. Refrigeration uses up 14.9% of that (the hatched part of the graph above) or 262,000 barrels of oil, or 464,546, MWhr.

Of course, shopping for fresh food and using it right away won't get rid of all refrigeration; we will always have ice cream and milk. But it certainly would make a difference. ::Ethicurian for backup and sourcesReefer Madness on TreeHuggerIDS07: Small Fridges Make Good CitiesGetting Rid of the Fridge - Big Step or Small ? Freeaire Refrigeration System will Work for A Few Years YetE-Cube Reduces Display-Case Refrigerator Electricity UseNatural Refrigeration : Collecting Ice in China