WEBVTT - How the humble refrigerator changed the world 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:17.200 Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week the cold rush. 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:20.479 There's plenty of mistakes that happen, and all that products 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:26.800 full of little small decisions. If you're bat like ninety percent, 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:30.159 you're doing great. So I'd say ninety percent of what 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.560 comes over here is perfectly good. And then there's always 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:34.599 the second wave of our inspections of them. 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.279 That's a guy inside of fridge, a really big fridge. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.920 His name is Matthew Derico, and he's giving a tour 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.760 of a cold storage facility in the bikes. Matthew's family 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.000 has been in this business for generations. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.760 We're dealing with a perishable product. It's grown under interesting 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:53.120 conditions that are all different. 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:57.240 A century ago, they were responsible for the first transcontinental 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:00.480 shipment of bruccoli from California to New York on a 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:06.440 refrigerated train. Those were the earliest days of the cold chain. Now, 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:10.160 those of us in developed countries take it for granted. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.520 Today three quarters of everything on the average American plate 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:22.200 is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, or sold cold. You know 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.840 cold storage facilities exist, but I bet you don't know 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.880 just how big these spaces have become. The US alone 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:35.000 boasts around five point five billion cubic feet of refrigerated space. 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.880 That's like one hundred and fifty Empire State building's worth 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.720 of freezers, and developing countries are starting to catch up. 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:46.040 Between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two, the whole world's 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:50.760 chilled and frozen warehouse space increased by twenty percent at 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.680 a time when ice caps are melting faster than ever. 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:58.000 The number of walk in refrigerators is also expanding. This 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:02.040 coal rush has huge implications for the planet. It's something 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:06.040 journalist Nicola Twilly has thought a lot about. She's explored 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.240 quite a few giant freezers, like the one Matthew works in. 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.519 That's because she's the author of a new book about 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:17.240 how refrigeration has shaped our food, ourselves, and our planet. 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.919 It's called Frostbite, and it's a really fun read full 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.840 of crazy trivia, like the fact that the Irish independence 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:28.840 movement might have refrigerated beef from the US to thank 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:34.480 for its success. Now, refrigeration is considered a climate solution. 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:38.160 More than thirty percent of all food produced on farms 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.480 in poor nations never makes it to a store, and 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.760 a coal chain can help reduce that food waste. But 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.760 on the flip side, it turns out that having access 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:52.160 to refrigeration can also lead to food waste. Americans waste 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:54.680 more than thirty percent of their food in their homes 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:59.480 because they hold so much in the fridge. That's why 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.919 I was excit I did to talk to Nicola because 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.560 the humble fridge is going to play a big part 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:22.400 in our planet's future. Nicola, Welcome to the show. 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:23.720 Thank you for having me. 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.519 Now, let's start at the beginning with the invention of refrigeration. 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.200 It's one of those modern miracles that few people think 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:35.840 about and most people take for granted. But the route 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:39.840 to inventing the fridge was quite long. Can you take 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.200 us back in time and talk us through how it happened. 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.560 Yeah, if you think about it, humans have had control 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.960 of fire since before we were modern humans, and yet 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:55.240 we haven't been able to produce cold at will until 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.440 maybe one hundred and fifty years ago, Max. So it's 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.200 sort of an incredibly recent invention. And it's not that 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:07.040 early humans had no idea that cold would preserve food, 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.160 because they noticed that right away. It's just that there 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.680 wasn't a sense of how to control it or even 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.320 what cold was. It was actually all of the great 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:22.680 minds of scientific history, Galileo, you know, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.120 Leonardo da Vinci. They all kind of wrestled with what 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.320 is cold? And there was theories that, oh, it's maybe 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.880 you know, these frigorific atoms, or maybe it's sort of 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:40.240 a force that gets distributed from the north pole or 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:43.080 rises up from the ground down from the air. No 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.279 one had any idea. It was actually immensely frustrating for people. 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:49.880 Francis Bacon died while he was trying to figure it 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.520 out from a chill caused by trying to stuff a 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.000 chicken with ice. So it really took a long time 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.440 to work it out. And actually even when the first 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:05.640 person to sort of create cold artificially, Scottish doctor named 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:09.120 William Cullen, he sort of did it as a party 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:13.040 trick because it wasn't something you could do at scale. 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.599 It wasn't seen as something that would work to refrigerate 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.320 our whole food system, let alone you know the way 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.880 we use air conditioning now, you know our factories, houses, 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:28.760 data centers. He just managed to evaporate some ether under 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.920 pressure and freeze a flask of water, and no one 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:36.239 looked at that and saw the potential for another seventy 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:41.960 five years. And the first refrigerating machines were just enormous 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.839 and blew up all the time and were incredibly dangerous. 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:50.120 All of the early pioneers just constantly losing eyebrows and 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.560 you know, fingers and all the rest of it. So 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.440 it took a very long time. You know. The first 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:01.440 commercial machine was the eighteen fifties. It doesn't become domesticated 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.400 something that we can actually have in our homes until 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.640 the nineteen twenties. So that's one hundred years ago. It's 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:08.799 really recent. 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.720 And it was shocking to know that you just went 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.560 and built a refrigerator for yourself for this book. Is 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:17.640 it really that simple? 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:23.400 Well, so, I was an embarrassingly long way through the 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.200 writing of this book when I realized I too, really 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.880 didn't understand how to make cold. I was like Galileo. 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.360 I had no idea, you know. I was looking at 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.760 how cold had reshaped what we eat and where it's grown, 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:39.880 and how it tastes, and how good it is for 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.560 us and the planet, but I didn't understand how we 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:48.320 made it. So a friend of a friend runs an 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:52.440 HVAC startup, and he said, well, come to my garage. 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:56.599 We can build a fridge. And I was like, you 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.760 can't just build a fridge, but it turns out you 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.960 can now. Well, to be fair, this was a bit 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.679 more like when you make dinner from you know, jarred 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:10.080 pasta sauce and a retisserie chicken and some pre washed 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.880 you know, spinach leaves with something. I wasn't actually building 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.360 all the elements from scratch. So we had purchased a compressor, 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:23.160 we had purchased an evaporator, we had purchased the various 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.200 There are sort of four main components, and what we 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.560 did was join them up in such a way and 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:32.240 then charge it with refrigerant, which is the chemical that 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:37.320 evaporates under pressure to create the cooling effect. Because if 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:39.040 any of your listeners are like me and have no 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:43.040 idea what cold is, still it's just the absence of heat, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.120 and so cooling is that sense of loss as you 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.880 remove heat. And so what you want to do, if 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.240 you remember from high school physics, which I completely did not, 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:58.920 is when a liquid evaporates into a gas that takes energy, 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.840 and you suck that energy in from the atmosphere around 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.679 you as heat energy, thus creating the sort of sense 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:09.200 of losses. All that heat energy is pulled away the 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.840 cooling and so it's a really simple system. The trick is, 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.120 of course, to create you know, you do that once, 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.640 That's what William Cullen did in seventeen fifty five. The 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:22.560 trick is to keep doing it and create a circuit 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:24.560 where it just goes round and round and round and 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.680 keeps evaporating. But even that is surprisingly simple once you've 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.360 built it. It's just something that I think is so 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.640 invisible to the majority of us that we never think 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:35.000 about it. 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.840 Yeah, and a major turning point came when this invention 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:43.640 was put to work at scale. And you write before 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:49.680 that most meat eaten in cities walked itself to market, 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.840 often over enormous distances, and of course when catalysts marching 0:08:55.400 --> 0:09:00.360 miles to an urban slaughterhouse, it's getting skinnier along the way. 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.920 But once the problem of moving large quantities of frozen 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:09.880 meat was solved, all that changed, and soon beef was 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:15.280 being shipped across oceans from America to England. How did 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.719 this transform the way we eat? 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:24.280 It's an astonishing transformation on so many levels. As you say, 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.920 I mean, the problem of getting meat and also dairy 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.800 into cities was really a huge one, not least of 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.360 which was that you then had to slaughter them in 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.800 the city. And so the area around Smithfield Market in 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:43.680 London or the slaughterhouses in New York was just I mean, 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:49.040 can you imagine slaughtering enough beef for a city in 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.360 the middle of that city in summer, say, I mean, 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:57.600 it was nauseating. There was blood, guts, foam, froth, it 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:05.000 was absolutely and bringing meat from places like Argentina, New 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.200 Zealand Australia where there was vast amount of land not 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.280 a lot of people, it lowered the price of meat immediately, 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.320 I mean by a quarter at least, and so suddenly 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.800 poor people who had not been able to have meat 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:24.359 except on very special occasions could dine on meat frequently. 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.400 You know. Red meat consumption went through the roof. 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.680 And today we think of one of the climate solutions 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.960 as to try and eat less red meat because it 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:41.440 produces so much green as gases, mostly from cow's belching methane. However, 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:46.640 this increase in meat consumption happened partly because of the 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:51.520 ability to move cheap meat around, but also because signs 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.320 at the time, for some reason, at least in the West, 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.960 was telling people the only way to survive is to 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.559 have more protein, and the protein come from. 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:04.640 Meat, right, This is sort of a sad mistake in 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:09.559 the history of science. Chemistry was a relatively recent field 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.199 of research in the eighteen hundreds. You know, previously there 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.920 had been alchemists and they were trying to turn things 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.200 into gold and find elixirs of eternal life. So it 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.960 was a relatively new field and one of the things 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:25.680 that chemists were doing, we're trying to sort out what 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.360 it is in food that we need, and in the 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:33.320 early eighteen hundreds, some mistaken experiments led them to the 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:38.040 conclusion that actually it was only protein. Carbohydrate and fat 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.679 were just sort of nice to have, not necessary, and 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.840 no one knew about vitamins. Vitamins didn't come along until 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:49.640 the nineteen thirties, so protein was the be all and 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:56.480 end all, and that discovery coincided with the expansion of 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.720 cities to the first time that London was sort of 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.440 going from a million people to two million people to 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.600 three million people, the largest cities the world had ever seen. 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.240 And as we talked about getting meat into cities, is 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.600 really hard. So you have this sudden sort of scientific 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:17.000 realization that if we were to have, you know, strong 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.679 men to work in factories and make the nation great, 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.760 they must be fed with protein, and the fact that 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:27.960 we can't get protein to them. So it was an 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.360 utter panic. Of course, you know, they could have had lentils, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.040 but the scientists at the time weren't looking at lentils 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.960 for their protein content. They were looking at beef. So 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.160 I mean, we could have had a very different world 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.400 if those scientists had been like, we all need to 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.679 eat lentils. It's all a sort of misunderstanding, but it 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:47.320 shaped our modern food system. 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.040 We recently did a whole series on the show about 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.160 the power grid, and in a way, you can call 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:58.640 it the world's biggest machine because everything works in sync. 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.280 And when I was reading the book, it made me 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:05.520 think that the cold chain is kind of similar. It's 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.600 a giant system. Yes, it's not in one place, and 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:14.000 it's not connected all the time, but it is connected. 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.520 So was it one of your hopes that when people 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.400 read the book they realize this standalone home appliance that 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.040 you have is actually part of a huge system. 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.680 Exactly, Yes, And that's why I in the chapter where 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.640 I look at the domestic refrigerator, I call it the 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.200 tip of the iceberg. I mean within the industry our food, 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:39.680 our perishable food supply system is called a cold chain, 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.240 with the idea chain that it is connected from your 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:46.680 farm to your fridge. The domestic fridge is really the 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.240 weak link because once you pick it up the supermarket, 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.280 then it sits in your car or in your bike 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.440 rack or you know, shopping bag, and isn't refrigerated on 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.480 its way home. But up until that point, say a 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.480 green bean within an appur or two of harvest, can 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.360 have been brought down to a certain temperature and kept 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.920 there all the way to supermarket shelves. So I ended 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.360 up seeing it as a sort of distributed winter. And 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:15.640 it's entirely connected by this network of refrigerated chipping containers 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:21.720 and ships and trucks and trains, but it isn't visible 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.680 as one gigantic winter. It's a series of sort of 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.600 pockets of cold, and this artificial winter that our food 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:35.480 spends time in moves around and it's actually enormous. But 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.440 because you never see it as a connected whole, you 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:39.800 don't realize. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:46.280 Now, this artificial winter does sound very energy intensive. Were 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.760 you able to put a number on the amount of 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:54.640 emissions that are attached to refrigeration. 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.640 Yes, it's a difficult one to get an exact number on, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.880 and of course you're not taking into accounts sort of 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:07.680 the expanded emissions that come from, say, being able to 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.520 eat more red meat because you can cool it. So 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.720 leaving aside those sort of knock on effects, cold storage 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:18.800 companies are currently the third highest industrial consumers of energy, 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.800 so the power to run cooling equipment is more than 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:24.920 eight percent of global electricity usage. 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.760 Right now, there's energy used, But of course there's another 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.680 warming impact to consider in refrigeration, and that's to do 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.120 with the refrigerant. The gas that moves around, is compressed, 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.600 is evaporated. In the early days, that gas was a 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.720 poisonous gas, typically ammonia or sulfur dioxide, and it caused 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.520 a bunch of accidents and the industry was forced to 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.040 find an alternative, which it did and was pretty effective, 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:54.880 except it was chlorofluorocarbons, which turned out to not be 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.520 poisonous but created a hole in the ozone layer. So 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:01.280 one of the most successful and vironmental treaty comes out 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.800 of that desire to change the refrigerant one more time, 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:11.560 from CFCs to what became hfc's, which did not create 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.440 a hole in the hose and layer, but are super 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.320 warming gases. There are thousands of times more warming ten 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:23.640 for ten for CO two. Now we are at that 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:27.520 point where we need to eliminate hfc's as well. So 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.040 what are the choice of refrigerants that we have today 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:32.880 and what does innovation look like? 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:38.640 So, yeah, that's a great question. There are lower global 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.640 warming potential as they call it GWP refrigerants coming on 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:47.840 the market. Many refrigerated warehouses and such like are moving 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:50.880 to ammonia systems. 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.720 For example, we're going back to the poisonous gas. It's 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.120 very dangerous, except we can handle it better this time. 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:02.040 I'm assuming, well, I mean if it. I had a 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:06.040 graphic description from a guy who runs a refrigerated warehouse 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.399 who said, you know, when you see that white cloud, 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.760 you're seeing death. It wants your crevices. Apparently it goes 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:16.719 for your eyeballs. It's just really a nasty chemical. And 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:20.000 so one of the problems actually is that the cold 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.280 chain is expanding everywhere. It's expanding even in countries that 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.399 seem as though they already have plenty of refrigerated space, 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.480 such as the United States, but it is expanding fastest 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.160 in parts of the world that don't have a cold 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:39.240 chain currently, so sub Saharan Africa, large parts of Southeast Asia. 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:43.200 Those places are building a cold chain from scratch right now. 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:49.639 And they are also not typically equipped with a lot 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.840 of trained engineers who can work with these dangerous gases, 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.080 and a lot of the replacement refrigerants are much harder 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:06.000 to use, flammable, toxic, just difficult and require more sophisticated machinery. 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.720 So it's really a hard thing to replace these HCFCs 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:16.000 and HFCs with these new refrigerants in places that already 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:20.120 don't have enough engineers to make the simple non toxic 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.240 refrigerants work. So that's one of the huge issues. And 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:27.200 actually now there's a huge black market in hdfcs and 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:32.360 hfc's because they're cheaper, easier to use. The old equipment 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:35.360 runs on them, and so even though they're being phased 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:39.080 out or even in some cases banned, they're still widely 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.679 traded and widely used because they work and people know 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.439 how to use them. So that's a huge problem. But 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.560 to me, I thought The most interesting thing was not 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:55.280 to think about the future of refrigeration beyond just okay, 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.800 how do we make a better refrigerant, but can we 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.520 make a better way of cooling? And even beyond that, 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.120 can we make a better way of food preservation? Food 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.960 preservation is the goal here, after all. Cooling is just 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:10.920 how we do it. 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:17.000 And you also traveled to China as part of your reporting. Now, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.240 I went to China last in twenty eighteen, so it's 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.840 been a while. But having traveled to the US and 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:25.640 the UK before I traveled to China, I was kind 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.800 of shocked by how developed the country was. Infrastructure was fantastic, 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:35.960 the fast trades but really fast. The system to pay 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:40.120 was easier, you could use apps, et cetera. But you 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:44.280 found that the coal chain wasn't developed enough, and that 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.879 was a little bit surprising to me. Why is that 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:47.399 the case. 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:53.000 Well, that's changing really really fast. So China made building 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.960 a coal chain a modern cold chain part of its 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:01.040 twelve five year plan. And you know, when China sets 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.679 out to do something, they really do it. And so 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:08.199 it took a while and it was uneven. You know 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:12.080 that the major cities had much better refrigerated facilities. The 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:17.600 rural areas had nothing, and there were gaps, and you know, 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.040 people would say to me, oh, we would import you know, 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.879 chicken and it would come in beautiful and at the 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.920 port it would be kept cold, and then we would 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.399 find it, you know, five days later in a rural 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.600 distribution warehouse with just a wet towel over it to 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.520 keep it quote unquote fresh. So it was a work 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.760 in progress when I went, but it's accelerating fast. And 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.480 I would say, China, it's a huge country. It has 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.440 a huge food system. It's cold chain is still only 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.760 one sixth the size of the US one, so there's 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:55.000 still you could argue that the US one is bigger 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.880 than we need, but there's definitely still room for growth 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.920 in China. But you can start start seeing that it's 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:05.440 really getting there. So, for example, Washington State cherries used 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:10.200 to be air freighted to China because they were popular 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:15.040 as gifts, and you couldn't get decent cherries imported from 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:17.960 the countryside in China because the cold chain didn't exist 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:19.879 to get them to the cities. So it's easier to 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:24.560 import them, air freight them from Washington State, then bring 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.040 them in from the countryside in China, just because the 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.639 cold chain wasn't there. That's changing. So now it's making 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:34.439 less economic sense to air freight them, and as the 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.360 cold chain is built up in China, more economic sense 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:38.840 to bring them in from the countryside. And you can 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:41.320 see that change in sort of real time. Washington State 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.119 farmers are adjusting to that because the cold chain in 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:45.119 China's picking. 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:53.000 Up after the break. How refrigeration can reduce food waste 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.719 or if you're not careful, increase it. If you've been 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.520 enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate and 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.960 review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:13.000 other listeners find the show. Having seen enough refrigerators in 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:16.600 America over the years of traveling to America, oh my god, 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.159 American fridges are huge and they really don't need to 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:23.680 be ah. But on food waste itself, there are two 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:26.479 stories to be told when it comes to refrigeration. On 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.320 the one hand, in developing countries where you still get 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:34.480 a lot of agriculture being part of the economy, not 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:36.919 having a coal chain can lead to a lot of 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:40.159 food waste as the food travels from the farm to 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:45.720 the consumer because it rots in the process. On the 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:50.879 other hand, having access to refrigeration in developed countries means 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:53.680 people just buy a ton of food and think it's 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:57.560 going to be all okay in the fridge, and it 0:22:57.640 --> 0:22:59.800 isn't the case, and a lot of food is wasted 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:04.000 in refrigerators. So how do we actually try and figure 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:08.960 out how to reduce food waste and use refrigeration as 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:11.240 a benefit not a loss. 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:15.600 Yeah, it's a really interesting problem. You know. Food waste 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.160 is often touted as the reason to build a cold 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:22.240 chain in countries like I visited Rwanda with a UN 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.960 sponsored sort of effort to bring the cold chain. I mean, 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:29.560 people are losing thirty to forty percent of the harvest 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:33.640 before it ever gets to market. Now, that's a horrific 0:23:33.840 --> 0:23:38.280 waste in a country as poor, and you can't afford 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:40.240 to be losing that much food. So you can see 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:42.880 why there's a desire for a cold chain. The problem, 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:45.760 as you say, is that in the developed world, we 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.840 are throwing away thirty to forty percent of our food 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:53.719 at the retail and consumer end. The abundance that refrigeration 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.560 has given us is translated into a sort of lack 0:23:56.640 --> 0:24:00.240 of care, a willingness to waste the food is so 0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:03.680 plentiful and so cheap that people would rather go and 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:08.320 buy something else, I mean honestly, rather than sniff their milk, 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:12.120 because obviously sniffing off milk will kill you. Everyone knows 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:15.199 that they would rather pour it out and buy you know, 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:18.320 just trust the cell by label and buy another pint. 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:22.880 And that's that isn't an impact of refrigeration too. So 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:25.560 some of the things I looked at here are first 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:29.600 of all, sell by dates ridiculous. There is no sort 0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:32.560 of logic to them. I mean, in the US, it's 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.359 a particular mess you have because it can be state 0:24:35.400 --> 0:24:38.800 by state. So in Montana milk will expire a week 0:24:38.840 --> 0:24:40.800 earlier than it will in the rest of the country. 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:44.920 There's nothing particularly you know, poisonous to milk about Montana. 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:48.680 It's just the system. So that's ridiculous. You know. People 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:50.439 have tried to come up with all kinds of smart 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:54.760 fridges and technological solutions here. To my mind, the things 0:24:54.760 --> 0:25:00.000 that work most effectively are actually ways to save food 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:03.560 food from the refrigerator and make it visible. So there's 0:25:03.600 --> 0:25:06.000 a few different things. I mean, one, there's a quote 0:25:06.000 --> 0:25:08.760 from an architect I love that says, small fridges make 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:12.560 good cities. But we know this with motorways. When you 0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:14.760 build a bigger motorway, you get more traffic. Is what 0:25:14.880 --> 0:25:17.000 actually happens. People think it's going to be great and 0:25:17.119 --> 0:25:20.440 you know traffic what No, it's the theory of induced demand. 0:25:20.520 --> 0:25:23.399 Well it applies to fridges too. As your fridge expands, 0:25:23.520 --> 0:25:27.120 you just stalk it and then more goes to waste, 0:25:27.320 --> 0:25:31.960 and so small fridges shopping on a more frequent basis, 0:25:32.000 --> 0:25:34.840