Joelle and I removed our room heaters a few years ago, mostly because the building is heated in the winter to around 59F and we get enough heat from below that it stays around 71/72F throughout the winter. Sometimes it's too hot so we crack a window and always sleep with the windows open. Our TV died a few years ago and we ditched it despite having free TV access through the internet. When we want to watch something, we watch it on our laptop but the TV was too annoying to keep around and it sucked energy. We also used to use a dryer - which is not as common in France as it is in the US - but when that died, we went back to hanging clothes on a drying rack. Sure it's bulky but it's never much of an issue except for a few days here and there. The best part about it (besides it being free to dry) is that is helps add moisture to the otherwise dry air in the flat.
But a fridge? Now that would be a struggle. Possible, yes, but a major hassle. We don't own a car or drive very often and the grocery store is either across the street or a second is a few blocks away. Shopping is done with backpacks and by foot which is easy enough. Shopping every day or juggling food between freezer and cold storage or not being able to store leftovers would be a problem. More power to those who can do this, but when my current fridge dies, I will definitely replace it.
For the last two years, Rachel Muston, a 32-year-old IT worker for the Canadian government in Ottawa, has been taking steps to reduce her carbon footprint - composting, line-drying clothes, installing an efficient furnace in her three-storey house.
About a year ago, though, she decided to "go big" in her effort to be more environmentally responsible. After mulling the idea over for several weeks, she and her husband, Scott Young, did something many would find unthinkable: they unplugged their fridge. For good. "It's been a while, and we're pretty happy," Muston says. "We're surprised at how easy it's been."
As drastic as the move might seem, a small segment of the green movement has come to regard the refrigerator as an unacceptable drain on energy, and is choosing to live without it. Muston estimates that her own fridge, which was in the house when they bought it five years ago and probably dates back much longer, used 1,300kWh per year, or produced roughly 2,000lbs of CO2 - the same amount from burning 105 gallons of petrol. And even a newer, more efficient model would have used too much energy, she says, "because I'm getting along fine without one".
Muston now uses a small freezer in the basement in tandem with a cool box upstairs; the cool box is kept cold by two-litre soft drink bottles full of frozen water, which are rotated to the freezer when they melt. (The fridge, meanwhile, sits empty in the kitchen.)
