Ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s is rolling out new ice-cream freezers across the United States that use 10 percent less energy and cut out “F” gas coolants (aka hydro fluorocarbons) in favor of hydrocarbon refrigerants. As you can see from the photo above, the brand isn’t wasting the opportunity to trumpet this fact with patrons — it has plastered information about the new technology all over the new freezers.
The rollout actually isn’t confined to Ben & Jerry’s: all Unilever ice-cream brands are being moved over to the new cabinets. That includes Breyers, Good Humor, Klondike, Magnum (?) and Popsicle.
Ben & Jerry’s pioneered the new freezer concept back in 2008, and there has been plenty of progress made outside the United States. In 2011 alone, Unilever deployed 22,000 of the freezers in other regions of the world. The company figures that accounts for a reduction of 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and that is only a small portion of the freezers that Unilever has replaced.
In total, Unilever has installed more than 900,000 of the hydrocarbon refrigerant freezers around the world. In the United States, the company had to endure four years of trials and tests before the technology received the blessing of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
(Image of ice-cream freezer courtesy of Unilever)
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