WEBVTT - Best of: How the humble refrigerator changed the world 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:03.840 Hi, it's sukshat. While some of us enjoy downtime, this week, 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:08.000 we're bringing you a cool, wintry episode that should pair 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.559 well with any leftovers from your holiday cooking. It's about 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.120 refrigeration and the nearly invisible cold chain that makes it 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.439 possible for us to eat the twenty first century diets 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.840 we enjoy, and it's something that Nicola Twilly, who I 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.800 spoke with earlier this year, thinks we don't pay enough 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:27.880 attention to. So take a listen and enjoy. We'll be 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.200 back in the new year with a fresh episode with 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:34.360 the writer Kim Stanley Robinson about his climate visions for 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:38.680 twenty twenty five. Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:53.880 This week the Cold Rush. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.319 There's plenty of mistakes that happen in all that progres system, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:02.520 full of little small decision. If your bat like ninety percent, 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:05.880 you're doing great, So I'd say ninety percent of what 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:08.280 comes over here is perfectly good. And then there's always 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.160 the second wave of our inspections. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.920 That's a guy inside of fridge, a really big fridge. 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.360 His name is Matthew de Rico, and he's giving a 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:21.200 tour of a cold storage facility in the bikes. Matthew's 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.720 family has been in this business for generations. 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:27.480 We're dealing with a perishable product. It's grown under interesting 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:28.840 conditions that are all different. 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:33.000 A century ago, they were responsible for the first transcontinental 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:36.240 shipment of broccoli from California to New York on a 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:41.280 refrigerated train. Those were the earliest days of the cold chain. 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.880 Now those of us in developed countries take it for granted. 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.240 Today three quarters of everything on the average American plate 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:52.400 is processed, packaged. 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:58.680 Shipped, stored, or sold cooled. You know cold. 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.840 Storage facilities exist, but I bet you don't know just 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:06.120 how big these spaces have become. The US alone boasts 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.720 around five point five billion cubic feet of refrigerated space. 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.600 That's like one hundred and fifty Empire State building's worth 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.440 of freezers, and developing countries are starting to catch up. 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.800 Between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two, the whole world's 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:26.480 chilled and frozen warehouse space increased by twenty percent at 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:29.400 a time when ice caps are melting faster than ever. 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.679 The number of walk in refrigerators is also expanding. This 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.760 coal rush has huge implications for the planet. It's something 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.760 journalist Nicola Twilly has thought a lot about She's explored 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.960 quite a few giant freezers, like the one Matthew works in. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:48.280 That's because she's the author of a new book about 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:52.960 how refrigeration has shaped our food, ourselves, and our planet. 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.639 It's called Frostbite, and it's a really fun read full 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.560 of crazy trivia, like the fact that the Irish independence 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:04.560 movement might have refrigerated beef from the US to thank 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:10.240 for its success. Now, refrigeration is considered a climate solution. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.880 More than thirty percent of all food produced on farms 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.200 in poor nations never makes it to a store, and 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.520 a coal chain can help reduce that food waste. But 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.480 on the flip side, it turns out that having access 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:25.160 to refrigeration can also. 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:26.799 Lead to food waste. 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.760 Americans waste more than thirty percent of their food in 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.600 their homes because they hold so much in the fridge. 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.680 That's why I was excited to talk to Nicola, because 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:40.280 the humble fridge is going to play a big part 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:58.120 in our planet's future. Nikola, welcome to the show. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:03:59.440 Thank you for having me. 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.240 Now, let's start at the beginning with the invention of refrigeration. 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.920 It's one of those modern miracles that few people think 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:11.600 about and most people take for granted. But the route 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.560 to inventing the fridge was quite long. Can you take 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:17.920 us back in time and talk us through how it happened. 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.279 Yeah, if you think about it, humans have had control 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:26.680 of fire since before we were modern humans, and yet 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.960 we haven't been able to produce cold at will until 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.200 maybe one hundred and fifty years ago, Max. So it's 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.919 sort of an incredibly recent invention. And it's not that 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.760 early humans had no idea that cold would preserve food, 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.920 because they noticed that right away. It's just that there 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.400 wasn't a sense of how to control it or even 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.040 what cold was. It was actually all of the great 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:58.440 minds of scientific history Galileo, you know, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.960 Leonardo da Vinci, they all kind of wrestled with what 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:07.040 is cold? And there was theories that, oh, it's maybe 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.599 you know, these frigorific atoms, or maybe it's sort of 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:15.960 a force that gets distributed from the north pole or 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.800 rises up from the ground down from the air. No 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:23.000 one had any idea. It was actually immensely frustrating for people. 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:25.599 Francis Bacon died while he was trying to figure it 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.240 out from a chill caused by trying to stuff a 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.720 chicken with ice. So it really took a long time 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:36.120 to work it out. And actually even when the first 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:41.080 person to sort of create cold artificially, a Scottish doctor 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.280 named William Cullen, he sort of did it as a 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:48.120 party trick because it wasn't something you could do at 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.280 at scale. It wasn't seen as something that would work 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.760 to refrigerate our whole food system, let alone. You know 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:58.599 the way we use air conditioning now, you know our factories, houses, 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:03.599 you know data centers. He just managed to evaporate some 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.240 ether under pressure and freeze a flask of water, and 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.680 no one looked at that and saw the potential for 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:16.400 another seventy five years. And the first refrigerating machines were 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.200 just enormous and blew up all the time and were 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.839 incredibly dangerous. All of the early pioneers just constantly losing 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.800 eyebrows and you know, fingers and all the rest of it. 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:31.760 So it took a very long time. You know, the 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:36.320 first commercial machine was the eighteen fifties. It doesn't become 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.719 domesticated something that we can actually have in our homes 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.920 until the nineteen twenties, so that's one hundred years ago. 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:44.520 It's really recent. 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.440 And it was shocking to know that you just went 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:52.279 and built a refrigerator for yourself for this book. Is 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:53.359 it really that simple? 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.120 Well, so, I was an embarrassingly long way through the 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.960 writing of this book when I realized I too, really 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:06.600 didn't understand how to make cold. I was like Galileo, 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.080 I had no idea. You know. I was looking at 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:13.480 how cold had reshaped what we eat, and where it's grown, 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:15.600 and how it tastes, and how good it is for 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.320 us and the planet. But I didn't understand how we 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:24.080 made it. So a friend of a friend runs an 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.160 HVAC startup and he said, well, come to my garage. 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:32.320 We can build a fridge. And I was like, you 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.480 can't just build a fridge. But it turns out you 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.160 can now. To be fair, this was a bit more 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.880 like when you make dinner from you know, jarred pasta 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:46.360 sauce and a retisserie chicken and some pre washed you know, 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.120 spinach leaves. Was something I wasn't actually building all the 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.200 elements from scratch. So we had purchased a compressor. We 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:59.160 had purchased an evaporator. We had purchased the various there's 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:02.320 sort of four main components, and what we did was 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.000 join them up in such a way and then charge 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:09.679 it with refrigerant, which is the chemical that evaporates under 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.400 pressure to create the cooling effect. Because if any of 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.240 your listeners are like me and have no idea what 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.760 cold is, still it's it's just the absence of heat. 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.840 And so cooling is that sense of loss as you 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.600 remove heat. And so what you want to do, if 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.960 you remember from high school physics, which I completely did not, 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:34.720 is when a liquid evaporates into a gas that takes energy, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.560 and you suck that energy in from the atmosphere around 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.400 you as heat energy, thus creating the sort of sense 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:44.920 of losses. All that heat energy is pulled away the 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.560 cooling and so it's a really simple system. The trick is, 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.840 of course, to create you know, you do that once. 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.360 That's what William Cullen did in seventeen fifty five. The 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.280 trick is to keep doing it and create a circuit 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.439 where it just goes round and round and and keeps evaporating. 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.040 But even that is surprisingly simple once you've built it. 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.240 It's just something that I think is so invisible to 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.720 the majority of us that we never think about it. 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.559 Yeah, and a major turning point came when this invention 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.360 was put to work at scale. And you write before 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:25.400 that most meat eaten in cities walked itself to market, 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:30.560 often over enormous distances, and of course when catalysts marching 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:36.120 miles to an urban slaughterhouse, it's getting skinnier along the way. 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.640 But once the problem of moving large quantities of frozen 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:45.600 meat was solved, all that changed, and soon beef was 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:51.000 being shipped across oceans from America to England. How did 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.679 this transform the way we eat? 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:59.960 It's an astonishing transformation on so many levels. As you say, 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.680 I mean, the problem of getting meat and also dairy 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.520 into cities was really a huge one, not least of 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.080 which was that you then had to slaughter them in 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:14.520 the city. And so the area around Smithfield Market in 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:19.400 London or the slaughterhouses in New York was just I mean, 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:24.760 can you imagine slaughtering enough beef for a city in 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.079 the middle of that city in summer, say, I mean, 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:33.319 it was nauseating. There was blood, guts, foam, froth, it 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:40.439 was absolutely horrific. And bringing meat from places like Argentina, 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:44.480 New Zealand Australia, where there was vast amount of land 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.000 not a lot of people. It lowered the price of 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:52.200 meat immediately, I mean by a quarter at least, and 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:56.040 so suddenly poor people who had not been able to 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.160 have meat except on very special occasions could dine on 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.119 meat frequently. You know, red meat consumption went through the roof. 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.400 And today we think of one of the climate solutions 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.679 is to try and eat less red meat because it 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:17.160 produces so much greena's gases, mostly from cow's belching methane. However, 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:22.360 this increase in meat consumption happened partly because of the 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:27.240 ability to move cheap meat around, but also because science 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:30.040 at the time, for some reason, at least in the West, 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.720 was telling people the only way to survive is to 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.400 have more protein, and the protein comes from meat. 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:40.520 Right. This is sort of a sad mistake in the 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:45.520 history of science. Chemistry was a relatively recent field of 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.080 research in the eighteen hundreds. You know, previously there had 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.959 been alchemists and they were trying to turn things into 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:55.080 gold and find elixirs of eternal life. So it was 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:59.000 a relatively new field and one of the things that 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.800 chemists were doing. We're trying to sort out what it 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.400 is in food that we need, and in the early 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.760 eighteen hundred some mistaken experiments led them to the conclusion 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:13.960 that actually it was only protein. Carbohydrate and fat were 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.560 just sort of nice to have, not necessary, and no 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.640 one knew about vitamins. Vitamins didn't come along until the 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:26.000 nineteen thirties, so protein was the be all and end all, 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:33.480 And that discovery coincided with the expansion of cities to 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.240 the first time that London was sort of going from 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.240 a million people to two million people to three million people, 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.640 the largest cities the world had ever seen. And as 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.800 we talked about, getting meat into cities is really hard. 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.640 So you have this sudden sort of scientific realization that 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.360 if we were to have, you know, strong men to 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.120 work in factories and make the nation great, they must 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:01.880 be fed with protein, and the fact that we can't 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.440 get protein to them, so it was an utter panic. 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.720 Of course, you know, they could have had lentils, but 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.840 the scientists at the time weren't looking at lentils for 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:14.160 their protein content. They were looking at beef. So I mean, 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.440 we could have had a very different world if those 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:18.959 scientists had been like we all need to eat lentils. 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.000 It's all a sort of misunderstanding, but it shaped our 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:23.040 modern food system. 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.760 We recently did a whole series on the show about 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:29.880 the power grid, and in a way, you can call 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:34.360 it the world's biggest machine because everything works in sync. 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.000 And when I was reading the book, it made me 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.280 think that the cold chain is kind of similar. It's 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:45.320 a giant system. Yes, it's not in one place, and 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.720 it's not connected all the time, but it is connected. 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:53.240 So was it one of your hopes that when people 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.120 read the book they realized this standalone home appliance that 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.520 you have is actually part of a huge system. 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.440 Exactly, yes, And that's why I in the chapter where 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.400 I look at the domestic refrigerator, I call it the 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.920 tip of the iceberg. I mean, within the industry our food, 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.400 our perishable food supply system is called a cold chain, 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.959 with the idea chain that it is connected from your 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.400 farm to your fridge. The domestic fridge is really the 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:24.960 weak link because once you pick it up the supermarket, 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:27.000 then it sits in your car or in your bike 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:31.160 rack or you know, shopping bag and isn't refrigerated on 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.200 its way home. But up until that point, say a 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.240 green bean within an hour or two of harvest kind 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.080 have been brought down to a certain temperature and kept 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.640 there all the way to supermarket shelves. So I ended 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.080 up seeing it as a sort of distributed winter. And 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:51.320 it's entirely connected by this network of refrigerated chipping containers 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:57.440 and ships and trucks and trains, but it isn't visible 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:02.400 as one gigantic winter. It's a series of sort of 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.960 pockets of cold. This artificial winter that our food spends 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:11.600 time in, moves around in. It's actually enormous, but because 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.120 you never see it as a connected whole, you don't realize. 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:22.000 Now, this artificial winter does sound very energy intensive. Were 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.480 you able to put a number on the amount of 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:30.360 emissions that are attached to refrigeration. 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:36.360 Yes, it's a difficult one to get an exact number on, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.600 and of course you're not taking into accounts sort of 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.400 the expanded emissions that come from, say, being able to 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.240 eat more red meat because you can cool it. So 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.440 leaving aside those sort of knock on effects, cold storage 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:54.520 companies are currently the third highest industrial consumers of energy, 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.520 so the power to run cooling equipment is more than 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.560 eight percent of global electric usage right now. 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.360 There's energy used. But of course there's another warming impact 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.800 to consider in refrigeration, and that's to do with the refrigerant. 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:12.520 The gas that moves around, is compressed, is evaporated. In 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:15.760 the early days, that gas was a poisonous gas, typically 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.000 ammonia or sulfur dioxide, and it caused a bunch of 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.240 accidents and the industry was forced to find an alternative, 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:29.040 which it did and was pretty effective, except it was chlorofluorocarbons, 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.400 which turned out to not be poisonous but created a 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.840 hole in the ozone layer. So one of the most 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:39.400 successful environmental treaty comes out of that desire to change 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:45.880 the refrigerant one more time, from CFCs to what became hfc's, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:48.920 which did not create a hole in the ozone layer, 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.360 but are super warming gases. There are thousands of times 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:58.920 more warming ton for ton for CO two. Now we 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:02.880 are at that point we need to eliminate hfc's as well. 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.320 So what are the choice of refrigerants that we have 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.600 today and what does innovation look like? 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.359 So, yeah, that's a great question. There are lower global 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:18.359 warming potential as they call it GWP refrigerants coming on 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:23.560 the market. Many refrigerated warehouses and such like are moving 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.679 to ammonia systems. For example, we're going. 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:32.560 It's very dangerous, except we can handle it better at 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:32.840 this time. 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:37.600 I'm assuming well, I mean, if it leaks. I had 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.200 a graphic description from a guy who runs a refrigerated 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.119 warehouse who said, you know, when you see that white cloud, 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.480 you're seeing death. It wants your crevices. Apparently, it goes 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:52.439 for your eyeballs. It's just really a nasty chemical. And 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.680 so one of the problems actually is that the coal 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.000 chain is expanding everywhere. It's expanding even in countries that 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:03.119 seem as though they already have plenty of refrigerated space, 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:07.200 such as the United States. But it is expanding fastest 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:09.880 in parts of the world that don't have a cold 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:14.960 chain currently, so sub Saharan Africa, large parts of Southeast Asia. 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.960 Those places are building a cold chain from scratch right now. 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:25.359 And they are also not typically equipped with a lot 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:29.560 of trained engineers who can work with these dangerous gases, 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.800 and a lot of the replacement refrigerants are much harder 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:41.720 to use. Flammable, toxic, just difficult and require more sophisticated machinery. 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:46.440 So it's really a hard thing to replace these HCFCs 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:51.720 and HFCs with these new refrigerants in places that already 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.840 don't have enough engineers to make the simple non toxic 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:58.960 refrigerants work. So that's one of the huge issues. And 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.920 actually now there's a huge black market in hdfc's and 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:07.600 hfs c's because they're cheaper, easier to use. The old 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.640 equipment runs on them, and so even though they're being 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.040 phased out or even in some cases banned, they're still 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.280 widely traded and widely used because they work and people 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.920 know how to use them. So that's a huge problem. 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.560 But to me, I thought the most interesting thing was 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:31.000 not to think about the future of refrigeration beyond just okay, 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:34.520 how do we make a better refrigerant, but can we 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:38.240 make a better way of cooling? And even beyond that, 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.840 can we make a better way of food preservation? Food 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.679 preservation is the goal here, after all, cooling is just 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:46.640 how we do it. 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:52.720 And you also travel to China as part of your reporting. Now, 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.000 I went to China last in twenty eighteen, so it's 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.560 been a while. But having traveled to the US and 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.320 the UK. Before I travel to China, I was kind 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:05.520 of shocked by how developed the country was. Infrastructure was fantastic, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:11.680 the fast trades but really fast. The system to pay 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.880 was easier, you could use apps, et cetera. But you 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:20.040 found that the coal chain wasn't developed enough. And that 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.680 was a little bit surprising to me. Why is that 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:23.119 the case. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:28.720 Well, that's changing really really fast. So China made building 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:31.680 a cold chain, a modern cold chain, part of its 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:36.760 twelfth five year plan. And you know, when China sets 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:40.600 out to do something, they really do it. And so 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:43.919 it took a while and it was uneven. You know, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.200 the major cities had much better refrigerated facilities. The rural 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:53.320 areas had nothing, and there were gaps, and you know, 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.760 people would say to me, oh, we would import you know, 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:59.880 chicken and it would come in beautiful and the port 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.159 would be kept cold, and then we would find it, 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:07.320 you know, five days later in a rural distribution warehouse 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:09.679 with just a wet towel over it to keep it 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.080 quote unquote fresh. So it was a work in progress 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:19.560 when I went, but it's accelerating fast. And I would say, China, 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.320 it's a huge country. It has a huge food system, 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.879 its cold chain is still only one sixth the size 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.560 of the US one, so there's still you could argue 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:31.359 that the US one is bigger than we need, but 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.359 there's definitely still room for growth in China. But you 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.760 can start seeing that it's really getting there. So for example, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.760 Washington State cherries used to be air freighted to China 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:48.560 because they were popular as gifts, and you couldn't get 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.720 decent cherries imported from the countryside in China because the 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:54.679 cold chain didn't exist to get them to the cities. 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.720 So it's easier to import them air freight them from 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:02.119 Washington State than bring them in from the countryside in China, 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.720 just because the cold chain wasn't there. That's changing, so 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.400 now it's making less economic sense to air freight them, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.840 and as the cold chain is built up in China, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.320 more economic sense to bring them in from the countryside. 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:16.200 And you can see that change in sort of real time. 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.480 Washington State farmers are adjusting to that because the cold 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:20.760 chain in China is picking up. 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:29.159 After the break. How refrigeration can reduce food waste or 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:31.639 if you're not careful, increase it. 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:32.560 If you've been. 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.280 Enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate and 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:38.720 review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:48.720 other listeners find the show. Having seen enough refrigerators in 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.320 America over the years of traveling to America, oh my god, 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:55.879 American fridges are huge and they really don't need to 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:59.400 be Aha. But on food waste itself, there are two 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.199 stories to be total when it comes to refrigeration. On 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.040 the one hand, in developing countries where you still get 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:10.119 a lot of agriculture being part of the economy, not 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:12.639 having a coal chain can lead to a lot of 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:15.879 food waste as the food travels from the farm to 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:21.439 the consumer because it rots in the process. On the 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:26.600 other hand, having access to refrigeration in developed countries means 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:29.400 people just buy a ton of food and think it's 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:33.320 going to be all okay in the fridge and it 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:35.560 isn't the case, and a lot of food is wasted 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:39.720 in refrigerators. So how do we actually try and figure 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:44.680 out how to reduce food waste and use refrigeration as 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:47.199 a benefit not a loss. 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:51.320 Yeah, it's a really interesting problem. You know. Food waste 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:53.880 is often touted as the reason to build a cold 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:57.960 chain in countries like I visited Rwanda with a un 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:01.639 sponsored sort of effort to bring the cold chain. I mean, 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:05.280 people are losing thirty to forty percent of the harvest 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:09.360 before it ever gets to market. Now, that's a horrific 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:14.000 waste in a country as poor, and you can't afford 0:24:14.040 --> 0:24:15.960 to be losing that much food. So you can see 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:18.600 why there's a desire for a cold chain. The problem, 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:21.480 as you say, is that in the developed world, we 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:24.560 are throwing away thirty to forty percent of our food. 0:24:24.680 --> 0:24:29.480 At the retail and consumer end. The abundance that refrigeration 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.280 has given us is translated into a sort of lack 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:35.960 of care, a willingness to waste. The food is so 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:39.400 plentiful and so cheap that people would rather go and 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:44.040 buy something else, I mean, honestly, rather than sniff their milk, 0:24:44.400 --> 0:24:47.840 because obviously sniffing off milk will kill you. Everyone knows 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:50.919 that they would rather pour it out and buy you know, 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:54.040 just trust the cell by label and buy another pint. 0:24:54.240 --> 0:24:58.600 And that's that isn't an impact of refrigeration too. So 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:01.240 some of the things I looked at here are first 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:05.320 of all, sell by dates ridiculous. There is no sort 0:25:05.359 --> 0:25:08.280 of logic to them. I mean, in the US, it's 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:11.080 a particular mess you have because it can be state 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:14.520 by state. So in Montana milk will expire a week 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:16.520 earlier than it will in the rest of the country. 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:20.680 There's nothing particularly you know, poisonous to milk about Montana. 0:25:20.760 --> 0:25:24.399 It's just the system. So that's ridiculous. You know, people 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:26.159 have tried to come up with all kinds of smart 0:25:26.200 --> 0:25:30.480 fridges and technological solutions. Here, to my mind, the things 0:25:30.520 --> 0:25:35.879 that work most effectively are actually ways to save food 0:25:36.000 --> 0:25:39.399