David Hancock The story of a shop-a-phobes A rated shopping……..

I had a very surprising learning experience recently, which reinforced to me the positive impact we can have in reducing energy consumption through the choices we make as consumers.

After a long and happy life, our fridge-freezer died unexpectedly.  It soon became clear that no amount of twiddling the dials, switching on and off, or swearing at it was going to bring it back to life.  It was no longer functioning either as a fridge or a freezer, with both compartments no colder than the kitchen in which it stood.  The lights were on, but nobody was cold.

Reluctantly (at least on my part; as a certified shopaphobe it’s an activity I find difficult), Kerry and I went shopping for a new one, and were soon in a shop full of appliances, tempted by signs exclaiming ‘Special offer’, ‘This week only’, ‘Manager’s special’.  Against all odds, we tried to stick to our ‘green principles’, and battled with the voices in our heads that were shouting things like “Ooh, look at the size of that one” and “A retro-style, pink fridge would look great in your new kitchen”.  We started to look past the promotional offers to the energy rating labels stuck on the fridge-freezer doors.  Call me boring, but there’s a planet to save here.  I’m not sure we’ll do it by buying fridge-freezers though, but every action counts.

We quickly started to narrow down our search by excluding anything that wasn’t ‘A’ rated.  After fending off the persistent approaches of a couple of customer assistants with the usual “we’re just browsing, thanks”, we finally succumbed and engaged in conversation with the third assistant who came our way.  And how enlightened we were soon to become!  The assistant kindly gave us some ground-breaking information, which was that we could do better than an ‘A’-rated fridge-freezer!  “How can we do better than ‘A’-rated?”  we enquired, “Surely ‘A’ is as good as it gets”.  To our surprise, we were directed by the assistant towards an A+rated model.  Yes, A+!.

But is there really that much difference between ‘A’ and ‘A+’, I hear you ask.  What difference could a little ‘+’ sign really make?  Closer inspection of the energy labels showed that whilst most of the A-rated models consume around 400kWh of electricity per year, the A+rated ones consume around 260.  What a difference!  Whilst fridge-freezers pretty much look same (apart from the retro-style, pink ones) and they chill and freeze the same, they certainly don’t cost the same to run and their carbon footprints differ.

We hastily signed up for an A+ one and made a quick retreat from consumer mayhem to go home to bid farewell to our deceased appliance (to be collected and disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way by the provider of our new lean, mean chilling machine) and to make a start on draught-proofing our windows…….

Footnote: Since the purchase of our A+rated fridge-freezer, I have learned that A++ ones are out there somewhere.  Happy shopping!