One more reason (as if we needed one!) to love Ben and Jerry’s
Picture from Treehugger.com
Not only does Ben and Jerry’s support small farms, donate tons of money to charity, have a bus outfitted with solar panels, and refuse to use milk from cows treated with Bovine Growth Hormone - among countless other environmental and social achievements - they are now the first company in the US to use the Greenfreeze technology, a cleaner refrigeration technique than the typical hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) technology that’s been used since CFCs were discovered to be contributing to ozone depletion. HFCs were marketed as the safe alternative to CFCs but, no surprise here, it was shortly found out that HFCs help speed up global warming. The Greenfreeze technology was developed in the 1990s by German Greenpeace researchers shortly after this discovery, but was illegal in the US until this year.
So which company fought to be allowed to take the plunge into Greenfreeze? You guessed it! Today, a Ben and Jerry’s scoop shop in DC unveiled its “Cleaner Greener Freezer” with a celebration attended by Ben and Jerry themselves, as well as Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando. Must have been some party.Â
So hopefully we’ll be seeing lots of these Cleaner Greener Freezers around the country - Ben and Jerry’s are starting with 2,000 at their stores. And if this works out, we could be seeing Greenfreeze in our home refrigerators and freezers not too far down the road.Â
P.S. While looking around the Ben and Jerry’s website, I noticed that Pumpkin Cheesecake is back for fall!  Yum. Maybe our Charleston store has received its Greenfreeze unit…
Filed under: I'On Group, Mixson, Urban Sustainability on September 30th, 2008
Your passion for the complete integration of “green” processes at every stage of the manufacturing of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is well placed and reminds everyone how really important “green” is to out health and the earth. But your detailed examples “beg a question,” and also highlights a B-I-G gen”erational divide. In my lifetime, from the cream from my grandfather’s cows (which ate the grass from his fields in Summerville) we sat down in the afternoon, and with ice, sugar, and a handturned ice cream maker, we made ice cream. The family shared in the turning–as it got “stiffer” it was harder to turn. We learned about manufacturing, creating a product everyone enjoyed. We learned about team work. We learned about common experiences and memories. We appreciated our cows (which we also milked). We honored the land that provided the grass. And we shared the results of our own hands. In other words, “green” can be small, done at home, rekindle family/community life, become a shared memory that connects people, land, and a celebration of living. It can teach children good work ethnics, “green” can reach across generations. So while I like the corporate focus and the need to keep them on their toes, I do recall a sensible small alternative, that requires only a little time and effort, but yields something closer to the heart than just the taste–or analysis–of ice cream. If you don’t have a cow, select organic cream, and purchase a hand-turned churn. Then you set your own standards of green, control the “production” process, and gather control of life back into your own hands. The time researching corporate green can be used to easily return to learning to live by your own hands. That discovery really is deeply satisfying. Invite me to the first ice cream making party!
An excellent point. I myself have only ever made ice cream once, in elementary school, which is also the only time I’ve ever milked a cow! Your focus on small alternatives is, I believe and hope, becoming more mainstream once again as we as a people realize that we simply cannot continue using up our natural resources the way we currently do, if we want to survive. You may already know about this, but the I’On Group’s newest neighborhood, Mixson, is a foray into the smaller, greener living that you speak of. We hope it will help move us all towards more responsible lifestyles, with a greater appreciation for what we have, and a greater ability to see what we don’t need.