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ARGENTINA:
First ”Green-Friendly” Refrigerator
Marcela Valente*
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - By year-end,
a small company in Argentina will put a
new kind of refrigerator on the market,
which will go down in history as the
first in South America to operate
without damaging the ozone layer or
contributing to global warming.
The ozone-safe model has been used in
Europe for nearly a decade. But the
transnational corporations that
manufacture the refrigerators there have
been reluctant to make the investment
necessary to adopt the new technology in
the Americas.
Firms in Argentina and other Latin
American countries have attempted to
develop products using the technology,
but without success until this year,
when the goal was achieved by Autosal,
an Argentine company with 180 employees
that produces merchandise carrying the
Columbia and Koh-i-noor brand-names.
The price and the traditional style and
white color of the refrigerators will
remain the same. The revolutionary
aspect of the units is that they use a
new refrigerant, isobutane, to replace
the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) that destroy the ozone layer that
protects life on earth from harmful
ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
Nor do the new refrigerators use
hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), which
do not deplete the ozone layer but are
greenhouse gases that contribute to
global warming.
Isobutane is a gas from the family of
the hydrocarbons that has the approval
of the Montreal Protocol, the
international agreement aimed at
eliminating ozone-depleting gases.
HCFCs were seen as a step forward from
CFCs, until they were found to aggravate
global warming. Isobutane, on the other
hand, passes muster with the Kyoto
Protocol , the international treaty
aimed at reducing emissions of gases
that contribute to climate change, which
has not yet gone into effect.
The new model also replaces
hydrofluorocarbon (HFC), used as a
foaming agent in insulation, with
cyclopentane, another hydrocarbon gas.
Thus, the new units meet the
requirements of both the Montreal and
Kyoto protocols, as do most
refrigerators sold today in Europe.
The world's first climate- and
ozone-safe refrigerator technology
replacing CFCs and HCFCs with
hydrocarbon gases was developed in the
early 1990s by the international
environmental organisation Greenpeace,
which named the new technology "greenfreeze".
To ensure maximum diffusion, it did not
patent the invention.
The idea was initially rejected by
Germany's leading refrigerator
manufacturers, which had just invested
in replacing CFCs with HCFCs. The
companies also alleged safety reasons,
since the hydrocarbon gases are
flammable.
But a company on the verge of
bankruptcy, located in the former East
Germany, embraced the idea, the head of
Greenpeace International's Renewable
Solutions Campaign in Argentina, Mariana
Walter, told Tierramérica.
The German company, Foron, saw its sales
increase considerably almost overnight,
and within a few months, Germany's major
manufacturers began to convert their
plants to incorporate the new
technology, under pressure from consumer
demand.
Transnational corporations like
Whirlpool, Bosch and Electrolux began to
produce refrigerators employing the new
green technology in Europe, but not in
the Americas.
Not even the most-developed countries in
the hemisphere, the United States and
Canada, have adopted the new technology,
which would require extra investment.
Only Cuba, unable to import chemical
refrigerants due to the four-decade U.S.
embargo, is manufacturing refrigerators
using hydrocarbon gases.
Several other Argentine manufacturers
tried to adapt their factories to the
new green technology, but their attempts
ended in failure.
"Of the four firms that set out on the
new endeavor, three went under," said
Walter. Only Autosal, in the
northeastern Argentine province of San
Luis, which supplies 12 percent of the
national market, was left.
Up to now, the company has been selling
12,000 units a year. But it hopes to
sell 5,000 of the new units a month,
Autosal's marketing director, Guillermo
Moro, told Tierramérica.
The firm invested 1.5 million dollars in
the reconversion process, including
800,000 dollars that came from the
Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund
created to help developing countries
meet the target of eliminating CFCs by
2010.
According to Moro, the safety measures
that must be adopted in the
manufacturing of appliances using
isobutane and cyclopentane are no
greater than those required for
producing traditional refrigerators. "We
install detectors capable of detecting
any gas leak," said the executive.
Although the new units are slightly more
expensive to produce, the company
decided to absorb the difference in cost
to order to hold prices steady.
The new clean technology will not be
publicised by the company. "We are
putting it out on the market practically
at the end of the refrigerator-buying
season (from October to January), which
is not a good time to launch an
advertising campaign. Maybe next year,"
said Moro.
Greenpeace, however, will take on the
task of publicising the new product.
"This is a key development for opening
up the game in the region to other
companies that want to join in and use
this technology," said Walter.
Environmentalists hope to see a repeat
of what happened in Germany: that
consumers in Argentina - and other
countries in Latin America - will begin
to demand refrigerators using the new
green technology.
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