“A woman should wear fragrance wherever she expects to be kissed”-Coco Chanel
Laura Reynolds looks at some of the cheapest beauty products available
Take fridges, for example. Well, don’t literally take fridges - I’m not advocating household appliance theft or anything. What I am advocating, though, is this: one of the lesser known facts about energy saving is that fridges use up more electricity the more empty they are, so by filling yours up, you can save the world. Honestly, forget about the whole flying round the world business: Superman’s job would be a lot easier for him if he just went to Iceland and bought their entire stock of frozen peas.
The reason why your fridge/freezer might be melting the icecaps – and apparently giving me scope to make a lot of ironic jokes – is that if you have a lot of free space, then while it doesn’t take a lot of energy to bring the temperature down, it also means there’s nothing but the door to keep the cold air in.
Yes, it’s true that it does take more energy to cool down a jam-packed fridge, but once it’s at the right temperature, there’s no possibility of the cold fleeing wildly in every direction every time you go to get the milk out.
Since food obviously doesn’t move as fast as air does – or you know, probably doesn’t move at all - it acts as ballast to keep the cold inside and the temperature down. Well, that’s unless you’ve ever left a potato in the fridge for months. I’m pretty convinced those massive roots they grow might be big enough to carry their cold little potato bodies if they ever made a sprint for freedom. Be on your guard.
My root vegetable suspicions aside, I should tell you that I only just found out about fridge energy saving about two days ago. I was so excited to try it out for myself that I went to go and check our fridge. Yes, I’m a little over-keen - leave me alone. In any event, I probably got about as far as the kitchen door before I remembered: I share a house with five other people and we only have one refrigerator.
My housemates and I fill our fridge every day with cheese, beer and disturbingly meat-free pork sausages, to the point that you can barely close the door – and most other students I know are just the same. What that amounts to is that while you’re having fights with your flatmates about who left your milk on the worktop last night because they couldn’t find space for it, you’re actually helping the environment.
According to Global Cool, a well-stocked fridge saves ‘a bundle’ - that well known scientific measurement - of CO2 a year and the Big Green Switch agrees. Just don’t drink the sour milk afterwards. It’s neither helpful nor tasty.
Incidentally, if you’re out there reading this and thinking that actually, your fridge really isn’t that full, then panic not: you don’t have to go out and buy whole loads of food you won’t eat. All you need to do is fill some plastic bags with rolled up newspaper and stick that in there instead. I know it sounds ridiculous – who wants to chill two week old copies of the Guardian? – but it does fill the same amount of space as five bags of carrots would.
In effect, you’re recycling your old bags and paper, and you’re getting rid of empty fridge space at the same time. You’ve got two birds and one stone, and you know where I’m going with that. That said, if you don’t have any old newspapers lying about, I don’t think I need to go over the merits of filling your freezer with ice cream instead. Mm. Nutritious and delicious.
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