We often receive fruit and vegetables from our suppliers a number of days before our distribution day. Other times, we have surplus left over and wish to keep it until next week. Up until September 2024, we were faced with the problem of having only limited fridge space for vegetables. The problem was most obvious in summer, with the vegetables spoiling rapidly at room temperature.
We sought a large fridge for vegetables to ensure the correct temperature and humidity to keep them for much much longer.
In addition, we run a number of freezers for keeping shipments of frozen goods over a few weeks for distribution. One of our existing freezers was a donated second hand top opening tuckerbox style freezer*, probably at least 20 to 40 years old. It had limited capacity, and tests indicated that it consumes far more electricity than any of the other freezers. We asked TasNetworks if we could replace this last one, plus get one new one, meaning 1 new vertical hybrid fridge freezer and 1 new chest hybrid fridge freezer for food waste prevention and energy saving.
These days some very efficient hybrid fridge freezers are available on the market. Hybrid frdige freezers are ideal for our requirements, since our storage needs change from time to time. Being single compartment, less space is wasted on compartment divisions, and the cooling effort of the motor can be deployed more efficiently.
We bought a Hisense 384L Vertical Hybrid Freezer and a Hisense 300L Hybrid Chest Freezer from Good Guys.
Meanwhile, we disposed of the old freezer correctly, in view of it using old refrigerant liquid.
Now we have considerable savings of vegetables – our recipients benefit from having more and better quality vegetables given to them!
At the same time we achieved considerable savings of electricity costs from replacing old freezer. Thus we benefit from having to spend less on electricity, and the Tasmanian community benefits from reduced electricity load.