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COSTING THE EARTH
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Costing the Earth tells stories which touch all our lives, looking at man's effect on the environment and at how the environment reacts. It questions accepted truths, challenges the people in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world we live in.
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Contact Costing the Earth |
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| Not so climate friendly |
TOTALLY UNCOOL
When CFCs were banned in 1987, they were replaced in refrigerants by hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, which were welcomed as less harmful to the ozone layer. But what wasn’t mentioned was that these gases are up to two thousand times more potent in global warming terms than carbon dioxide, and yet they’re still widely used in air conditioning and chiller cabinets. These systems can leak up to twenty per cent of their contents into the atmosphere each year.
This edition of Costing the Earth reveals not only the devastating power of the current generation of coolant gases, but also the fact that much more climate friendly alternatives are being largely ignored.
The biggest users of HFCs in Britain are the supermarkets. They are responsible for fifty per cent of HFC emissions. Yet research done by the Environmental Investigation Agency has found that so far retailers have been slow to act by switching to natural ‘green freeze’ alternatives such as ammonia or CO2.
The EIA is calling on the government to take tougher action on supermarkets and introduce a ban on F Gases.
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RELATED LINKS
Environmental lnvestigation Agency Survey
Institute of Refrigeration
Southbank University
Natural Refrigerants
Environment and the workplace
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