Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Could you live without a refrigerator?

Transcript

Could you live without a refrigerator? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from how stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,
0:17
Speaker 1: and she's eating stalks of broccoli. Yes, not the florette's
0:21
Speaker 1: eating chunky trunk. She throws the floretts away. It's bizarre. No,
0:27
Speaker 1: she's not into food waste, so she's eating every single bit.
0:29
Speaker 1: She's just munching on it like a rabbit over there. Oh,
0:31
Speaker 1: I see you know. Oh no that I look more
0:33
Speaker 1: close to see that. You're right. That wasn't just a
0:35
Speaker 1: clever lead into what will be a great intro from you. No,
0:39
Speaker 1: that was the intro. Okay, Jerry doesn't waste food, people, No,
0:43
Speaker 1: food waste is a terrible thing. And we're we're that's
0:46
Speaker 1: that's only part of the tip of the iceberg of
0:49
Speaker 1: this subject that we're about to touch on the tip
0:52
Speaker 1: of the ice box. This is a huge, rambling, enormous
0:56
Speaker 1: topic that we're about to tackle. See, Chuck, you've heard
1:00
Speaker 1: of green eco friendliness. Yeah, yeah, we like eco consciousness.
1:05
Speaker 1: You'd like to push that racket when we can. Yeah,
1:08
Speaker 1: what said is like more and more today it seems
1:10
Speaker 1: to be. Well, there's parts that have becoming green, like
1:13
Speaker 1: people recycle, and like recycling is the thing now, it's
1:16
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. Like if you don't recycle, now you're
1:19
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those people that throws cigarettes
1:22
Speaker 1: out the window. Yeah, that's pretty bad too. You know
1:25
Speaker 1: a lot of people still do that. Yeah, but I
1:27
Speaker 1: think not to get off on my high horse, but
1:29
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the people that toss the
1:31
Speaker 1: cigarettes out the window probably like would say, if someone
1:35
Speaker 1: through a McDonald's back out the window, they'd be like,
1:38
Speaker 1: how can you do that? Yeah, Like they justify cigarettes somehow.
1:42
Speaker 1: I've seen that people throw those things out, like eco
1:45
Speaker 1: friendly people. I think, just the eco friendly smokers, I
1:47
Speaker 1: think justify that because it's like, wow, you still want
1:49
Speaker 1: a cigarette in your car, you rite, dude, because they
1:53
Speaker 1: stink there will end up in a in a lake
1:56
Speaker 1: or something. A birdle eat it. Did you know that?
1:58
Speaker 1: I was at the Guess station the other day and
2:02
Speaker 1: I saw a guy driving off and as he drove off,
2:05
Speaker 1: he held his hand out the window and released a
2:08
Speaker 1: stack of apparently losing lottery tickets a stay. I'm talking
2:12
Speaker 1: like thirty just right into the parking lot. I couldn't
2:16
Speaker 1: believe my eyes. I mean it's a joke now literally
2:19
Speaker 1: on Anchorman in the original anchor Man, when they finish
2:22
Speaker 1: all of their McDonald's, they just throw all their stuff,
2:24
Speaker 1: like in the park and the Madman had one of
2:27
Speaker 1: those two they have like a family picnic, and afterward
2:30
Speaker 1: they gathered up their stuff and just like picked up
2:32
Speaker 1: the mincot and throw all the trash out, and we're like,
2:34
Speaker 1: let's go right exactly That's how it used to be, though. Yeah,
2:37
Speaker 1: isn't that weird that that used to be a thing
2:39
Speaker 1: that it's okay to throw trash on the ground, and
2:41
Speaker 1: it's it's not okay, but some people still do it.
2:44
Speaker 1: I've seen it, right, Um. But the point is, I
2:48
Speaker 1: am making a point here. Believe it or not, there
2:51
Speaker 1: is some parts of the green movement that have become entrenched,
2:56
Speaker 1: ensconced in the mainstream culture, and it's having an act,
3:00
Speaker 1: it's having a real factor. It's not even enough of
3:03
Speaker 1: an effect. We're all headed for global catastrophe eventually. Um.
3:07
Speaker 1: But when we when we think about the green movement now,
3:10
Speaker 1: it almost seems past tense like it was. There's parts
3:14
Speaker 1: of it that seemed like a bit of a fad,
3:17
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like being green? How green
3:19
Speaker 1: can you go? Like what can you do? And uh,
3:22
Speaker 1: there was this thing that kind of popped up in
3:24
Speaker 1: two thousand nine because of a New York Times article, um,
3:29
Speaker 1: where people were starting to give up the refrigerators as
3:35
Speaker 1: part of the green movement to be green to basically
3:39
Speaker 1: like say I'm greener than now. You get the impression
3:43
Speaker 1: that that's what they're doing. Ultimately, they're saying, no, it's
3:46
Speaker 1: just one last thing that's using up um electricity, so
3:49
Speaker 1: it's saving CEO two emissions. But it seems to me
3:53
Speaker 1: to fall along the line of the people who like
3:56
Speaker 1: had themselves sterilized so they couldn't contribute to the growing population,
4:01
Speaker 1: global population. You're saying, those are about the same, it
4:04
Speaker 1: seems to me, although the the refrigerator one is far
4:09
Speaker 1: more reversible because you just go and buy a refrigerator
4:13
Speaker 1: and plug it in. Yeah, bam, I'm back baby. Well
4:17
Speaker 1: you can reverse your your procedure to not have kids
4:21
Speaker 1: to these days. Yeah, I think it's kind of it's
4:24
Speaker 1: a roll of the dice. Oh really was if it'll
4:27
Speaker 1: work again? Oh? I thought you could get it reversion
4:30
Speaker 1: up in the sweat. They can, you know, reverse it,
4:33
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily work. Okay, I thought that's pretty good.
4:37
Speaker 1: All right, man, that was a sidebar. Uh So should
4:42
Speaker 1: we talk about food waste? Well, let's talk about this
4:44
Speaker 1: refrigerator thing. You're really fixated on the food waste thing,
4:47
Speaker 1: aren't you. Well it's a big part of whether or
4:49
Speaker 1: not you can go without a fridge. Well, let's let's
4:51
Speaker 1: talk about what happens or why people go without a fridge. First,
4:54
Speaker 1: Chuck could feel bear with me. So people are pulling
4:57
Speaker 1: the plugs on these refrigers? Are they wearing two thousand
4:59
Speaker 1: nine or at least three people were in two thousand
5:02
Speaker 1: nine one in Canada? I think yeah? Um, And but
5:07
Speaker 1: I get the impression from reading the original New York
5:10
Speaker 1: Times article that there were there were. It was this
5:12
Speaker 1: kind of the sub thing among the green It wasn't
5:16
Speaker 1: all the rage, No, like bamboo flooring a cork flooring. No.
5:20
Speaker 1: And the New York Times article pointed out that it
5:23
Speaker 1: seems to be a dividing line among green the eco
5:27
Speaker 1: conscious in the eco crazy. Yeah, like what where some
5:31
Speaker 1: people say that's preposterous, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
5:35
Speaker 1: and then other people were like, look at how far
5:37
Speaker 1: I'm willing to go to be green. So what's the
5:40
Speaker 1: what's the benefit of all that? Well, a refrigerator uses electricity,
5:45
Speaker 1: and I guess we can give you a couple of
5:47
Speaker 1: stats to bring it all home for you. Typical fridge
5:51
Speaker 1: post two thousand uses about four fifty k watts per year. Yeah,
5:56
Speaker 1: that's thanks to the Energy Star ratings. Yeah, which is
5:59
Speaker 1: better than it used to be for sure. Um. And
6:01
Speaker 1: if you want to translate that into uh, cheeseburgers, no
6:05
Speaker 1: way into miles driven in your car, because we're talking
6:10
Speaker 1: about the emission of CEO two. Uh, that's about eight
6:13
Speaker 1: hundred miles driving a car, about eight hundred miles depending
6:17
Speaker 1: on what kind of mile do you get, because really
6:19
Speaker 1: it's a gallons of gas. Uh. Yeah. So even then
6:25
Speaker 1: the article they point out that it's kind of low
6:29
Speaker 1: on the list. It ranks behind closed dryer, central air
6:33
Speaker 1: in your furnace. Yeah, your furnace is like six thousand
6:36
Speaker 1: kilowats a year. It's amazing. So you're you're a refrigerator.
6:40
Speaker 1: UM's four d and fifty kilowat hours of electricity per year.
6:44
Speaker 1: So it's not even super high up in your household. No,
6:47
Speaker 1: it's nowhere near. But I think the people who are
6:49
Speaker 1: pulling the plugs on these refrigerators are saying every little
6:53
Speaker 1: bit counts. Yeah, and they probably have already taken other
6:57
Speaker 1: green precautions, like they probably don't run their furnace like this,
7:02
Speaker 1: you know, like they might have a pot belly stuff.
7:04
Speaker 1: They better not if they use a normal old like yeah,
7:09
Speaker 1: terrible electric furnace. They then I'm going to go to
7:14
Speaker 1: their house and have a little chance like shaking outside
7:16
Speaker 1: their house. Yet they're eating out of a glucooler, right,
7:19
Speaker 1: and that's what they do. I mean, like when when
7:21
Speaker 1: when you pull the plug on the fridge, I wish
7:24
Speaker 1: I could just come up with another phrase that rolls
7:27
Speaker 1: off the tongue. So I'm tired of saying that when
7:29
Speaker 1: you go without a refrigerator, dee fridge, deefridge chuck nice.
7:35
Speaker 1: When you de fridge um, you still need typically some
7:39
Speaker 1: source of cooling inside of your home, something that can
7:44
Speaker 1: keep some food items from perishing, because we apparently refrigerate
7:49
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff we don't need to. That is true. Yeah,
7:52
Speaker 1: you can keep that catch up the mustard out on
7:54
Speaker 1: the counter, hot sauce. I've read it goes three years
7:58
Speaker 1: in a regular pantry. Chi just keep it out there. Yeah,
8:01
Speaker 1: we kept growing up, kept a lot of stuff out
8:04
Speaker 1: of the fridge, and not for any reason other than
8:07
Speaker 1: that's just how it was in my house. Like I
8:09
Speaker 1: remember butter like in a tray on the counter. Butter
8:13
Speaker 1: is better that way. Room tip. Oh man, are you
8:15
Speaker 1: kidding me? Yeah, just like it's already it's so spread herble.
8:19
Speaker 1: I keep mine in the fridge just to keep it
8:20
Speaker 1: longer because I don't need that much butter. But man,
8:23
Speaker 1: if you go to a restaurant and they give you
8:27
Speaker 1: butter and it's cold, just like, what do you do?
8:30
Speaker 1: It's literally Emily's biggest pet peeve is well, I agree
8:34
Speaker 1: with cold rolls with cold butter or hot rolls with
8:37
Speaker 1: cold Yeah, because you get the hot rolls, you think
8:39
Speaker 1: this place knows what they're doing, and you get this
8:42
Speaker 1: cold pad of butter. So I've developed a technique, Um,
8:45
Speaker 1: you know, the under the arm pit method. But well
8:47
Speaker 1: it's close. It's it's you just cut your hands and
8:50
Speaker 1: you put a couple of those little foil wrap you
8:52
Speaker 1: want to make sure it's wrapped in foil pats. Of
8:55
Speaker 1: cold butter and you heat them up pretty quick. And
8:58
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, you make some friends around the
9:01
Speaker 1: table if you eat somebody's butter up for him because
9:03
Speaker 1: nobody likes cold button. Then you hand them a little
9:05
Speaker 1: butter pat and you're like, here, take this, it's my
9:07
Speaker 1: gift to you. I like it when they just have
9:09
Speaker 1: a little olive oil and balstomac vinegar. You know that's
9:11
Speaker 1: good too. But I like good room temperature butter, especially
9:15
Speaker 1: like milk fat content or more good. Um. So, like
9:21
Speaker 1: I said, I like butter out we left um remember
9:23
Speaker 1: certain condiments being left out? What about fruits and vegetables? Um? Yeah,
9:29
Speaker 1: like a lot of vegetables. I don't refrigerate now, like
9:32
Speaker 1: I never refrigerate peppers and onions, and well you don't
9:35
Speaker 1: want to. If you do refrigerate an onion, it will
9:38
Speaker 1: last longer. But if you're going to use it eat,
9:42
Speaker 1: you want to take it out of your refrigerator and
9:44
Speaker 1: bring it up to room temperature before you cook with
9:46
Speaker 1: it or use it in food, because it takes a
9:48
Speaker 1: lot of the temperature white. But that's also a tip
9:51
Speaker 1: if you hate crying. Um, because if you cut a
9:56
Speaker 1: cold onion, the enzyme that eventually sets off the chain
9:59
Speaker 1: reaction that makes you cry is contained. It's not as volatile.
10:04
Speaker 1: I've noticed that. So that's your your tip from Chuck
10:08
Speaker 1: and Josh my eyes killed me too. With onions, it
10:12
Speaker 1: depends only and it's not just like oh it's little tears.
10:15
Speaker 1: It's like massive burning. It's really bad. Really Yeah, yeah,
10:19
Speaker 1: you should super sensitive. I did it. Don't be dumb
10:21
Speaker 1: on it. That explains exactly what's going on with you.
10:23
Speaker 1: I've seen that, Okay, so you know, um so yeah,
10:27
Speaker 1: a lot of the vegetables I don't keep like it
10:29
Speaker 1: depends on when I'm gonna eat it. If I bring
10:31
Speaker 1: home some like a big head of cauliflower, I'll keep
10:34
Speaker 1: that out in the fruit basket for a couple of days.
10:37
Speaker 1: I've never seen that before in my entire life. Cauliflower out.
10:41
Speaker 1: I've only seen it in like a crisper drawer. Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: I've left cauliflower and broccoli out like green onions and
10:49
Speaker 1: can lemongrass, garlic. Of course, potatoes don't refrigerate. I think
10:56
Speaker 1: I would like stop short and point if I saw
10:58
Speaker 1: like cauliflower out and like the root pads, be like,
11:01
Speaker 1: what is that? That's just fine. I haven't even been
11:03
Speaker 1: to your house. I didn't notice that. Well, I mean
11:05
Speaker 1: I don't always have, had you gone through the col yeah,
11:08
Speaker 1: just eating it. Um. Tomatoes are another one too, there
11:11
Speaker 1: they'll last longer in the fridge if you're gonna cook
11:14
Speaker 1: with them. You want to bring up to your room temperature.
11:16
Speaker 1: Some stuff you just don't want to refrigerate. Potatoes, apparently
11:19
Speaker 1: you don't do very well in the fridge. You put
11:21
Speaker 1: them in a nice brown paper sack in your pantry
11:24
Speaker 1: away from the sunlight. They keep for a really long time. Yeah,
11:27
Speaker 1: you know, Jerry, I think Jerry showed me the little
11:30
Speaker 1: trick was that you with the cilantro Jerry and the yep,
11:32
Speaker 1: Oh what I need to notice because they eat a
11:34
Speaker 1: lot of cilantro. You the cilantro you don't use just
11:38
Speaker 1: fill up a glass like half full of water and
11:40
Speaker 1: just throw it in there and just leave it in
11:41
Speaker 1: your out in your kitchen. Oh like the base of
11:45
Speaker 1: it in the water and just stays fresh like super long.
11:48
Speaker 1: And you know, the fridge can beat up cilantro after
11:51
Speaker 1: like a day or two. I like your optimism, by
11:53
Speaker 1: the way, thank you. Um. The avocado is what always
11:57
Speaker 1: kills me though, I well, I I eat a lot
12:00
Speaker 1: of avocado as well. It's hard to keep those fresh.
12:03
Speaker 1: Tried a lot of tricks too. Well, here's here's your trick.
12:08
Speaker 1: You're ready, okay, Oh you're cutting up an avocado and like, yeah,
12:12
Speaker 1: that's it for the avocado. I have no trick for that. Well,
12:14
Speaker 1: what do you eat the whole? Yeah, pretty much. I
12:17
Speaker 1: don't understand what. Well, I don't know. I don't like
12:19
Speaker 1: eat the skin and everything. No, that's not what I mean.
12:22
Speaker 1: It's like once I couldn't do an avocado, all of
12:24
Speaker 1: that avocado is about to be consumed by me. So
12:27
Speaker 1: that's the tip. Yeah, But I do have another tip
12:31
Speaker 1: for you though, with avocados. You know how you go
12:33
Speaker 1: to the store and you like squeeze them, and you
12:35
Speaker 1: you you can find one out of a hundred and
12:37
Speaker 1: fifty that's squeeze a bowls. Pretty annoying, it is, But
12:40
Speaker 1: that squeezed one is gonna be nasty and bruised and
12:44
Speaker 1: just disgusting. There's gonna be basically like rot wherever you
12:48
Speaker 1: and everybody else squeeze that avocado. So you can have
12:51
Speaker 1: a lot less useable avocado. So you want to get
12:53
Speaker 1: one that you can't squeeze. It's so firm it can't
12:56
Speaker 1: be squeezed well. But then you just have to wait
12:58
Speaker 1: a few days to eat it. You can wait one day,
13:01
Speaker 1: it's all it takes, my friend. And here's how. You
13:03
Speaker 1: take a brown paper bag and buy a banana, and
13:07
Speaker 1: you put the banana and the avocados in the brown
13:09
Speaker 1: paper bag. Roll it up pretty tight, but leave a
13:11
Speaker 1: little space in there. And they do it, and the
13:13
Speaker 1: game right, they get it on. Uh, and what happens
13:17
Speaker 1: is the avocados ripening. Really Yeah. The the banana as
13:22
Speaker 1: it ripens, well, it puts off a gas um that
13:27
Speaker 1: ripens the avocados. I'm gonna try that, and I'm not kidding.
13:30
Speaker 1: Twelve to twenty four hours, you have totally ready avocados. Yeah,
13:35
Speaker 1: because I like my avocados firm still. Oh, you're gonna
13:39
Speaker 1: love this chuck and not mushy but not not hard,
13:42
Speaker 1: but just firm. You're gonna thank me later. I'm excited
13:45
Speaker 1: about your avocado experiences now. So there's plenty of stuff
13:49
Speaker 1: that doesn't need refrigerating, So that's one way that people
13:53
Speaker 1: can defridge. Yeah, this is turning into like food. One
13:57
Speaker 1: on one with Josh and chuck. Yeah, I hope that's okay.
14:00
Speaker 1: Um yeah, plenty of stuff that you don't have to refrigerate. Um,
14:03
Speaker 1: but people still use some sort of cooling mechanism. Yeah,
14:07
Speaker 1: like a cooler, Like if you have meats or dairy products. Um,
14:12
Speaker 1: if you want to go without a fridge, most people
14:13
Speaker 1: use a cooler. And the thing that annoy me with
14:17
Speaker 1: this article, as they said, or they use a mini
14:19
Speaker 1: freezer to make ice. I'm like, well, that's probably just
14:21
Speaker 1: about as bad as you're stupid fridge. Well, it's pretty close.
14:24
Speaker 1: So like one of those little chest freezers. Um, I
14:26
Speaker 1: didn't see the size of it. Oh, a six point
14:30
Speaker 1: four cubic feet chest freezer, which isn't big, but it's
14:33
Speaker 1: not that small. Um. But apparently that's the that's the
14:38
Speaker 1: thing that people who defridge use. That still uses two
14:42
Speaker 1: kilowatt hours a year. So really, by unplugging your refrigerator
14:46
Speaker 1: and using iNeST freezer, you're saving about fifteen gallons of
14:50
Speaker 1: gas a year. Yeah. I don't know if that's your best, Like,
14:54
Speaker 1: spend your time doing better things for the environment. I think,
14:57
Speaker 1: Well again, I think people who do this are saying
14:59
Speaker 1: I'll do this on top of stuff and then kind
15:01
Speaker 1: of cleverly, if you ask me, they're using this the
15:04
Speaker 1: ice chests to um, we'll basically fill up like a
15:08
Speaker 1: two lead bottle of water which they didn't allow to
15:11
Speaker 1: go to waste, the two leader bottle um, putting those
15:15
Speaker 1: in the freezer chest, and then having like a separate
15:18
Speaker 1: cooler that they put the frozen water bottles in to
15:21
Speaker 1: keep cool their milk and their meats and stuff like that.
15:25
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and you know what, we're gonna talk about
15:28
Speaker 1: some tips for shopping to accommodate in this lifestyle. But
15:32
Speaker 1: first let's take a little message, right Okay, all right,
15:40
Speaker 1: so you're talking about the cooler full of frozen bottles
15:44
Speaker 1: of water to keep like your milk in some of
15:47
Speaker 1: your dairy and stuff. But if you when you go
15:49
Speaker 1: to the store, if you're gonna try and live this way,
15:51
Speaker 1: you can't probably buy the gallons of milk unless you
15:54
Speaker 1: really go through a lot of milk. You might want
15:56
Speaker 1: to buy quartz of milk. You can't go to Sam's
15:58
Speaker 1: Club and buy eight gallons of mayonnaise unless you eat
16:03
Speaker 1: that pretty quickly. And if you should focus more attention
16:09
Speaker 1: on your mayonnaise habits, then what you're doing for the environment,
16:12
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to buy smaller amounts of things,
16:14
Speaker 1: which they say can cost a little more. But well, yeah,
16:17
Speaker 1: if you're not wasting food though, Like if you added
16:18
Speaker 1: up the food you waste, you're probably burning a lot
16:20
Speaker 1: of money and there's just gonna be far less food
16:22
Speaker 1: waste if you're buying in smaller amounts. Right. The other
16:25
Speaker 1: the other side of that though is um if you're
16:28
Speaker 1: you know, eco friendly or eco conscious, um, you're one
16:32
Speaker 1: of the things that you're probably trying to avoid is
16:34
Speaker 1: packaging as well. And if you buy a smaller amounts
16:36
Speaker 1: of food, that means you buy more packages. Think about that.
16:39
Speaker 1: And if you have smaller amounts of food, that means
16:42
Speaker 1: you have to go to the store more often, and
16:45
Speaker 1: then you may have to drive more often, which doesn't
16:48
Speaker 1: matter if you're riding a bike or something like that,
16:51
Speaker 1: but if you're driving a car, then you're burning those
16:54
Speaker 1: gallons of gas that you might necessarily not have been anyway. Yeah,
16:58
Speaker 1: you like you get in your old seventy to pick
17:00
Speaker 1: up truck and drive the twelve miles to get like
17:03
Speaker 1: a pint of Mannames, you have to stop and fill
17:06
Speaker 1: up at least once during that. Uh. So, can we
17:09
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about food waste though, Yeah, because
17:12
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty big thing, Like if you
17:14
Speaker 1: have no refrigerator, the chances of your food spoiling just
17:20
Speaker 1: simply increase if you have no refrigerator. Well not so apparently,
17:27
Speaker 1: according to a report, unless developed countries they have no refrigerators,
17:32
Speaker 1: they experience less food spoilers. Bam, you just faced me,
17:37
Speaker 1: because they're like, they're eating what they need. You know,
17:41
Speaker 1: they're not going to Sam's Club and buying seven hundred
17:45
Speaker 1: chicken McNuggets to put in the freezer. I hear that.
17:47
Speaker 1: And I guess if somebody who defridges uses the developing
17:50
Speaker 1: world as a model for their food consumption. Yeah, I
17:54
Speaker 1: wonder what hang ups there are though that would keep
17:57
Speaker 1: you from successfully doing that, or if it is just
18:00
Speaker 1: entirely possible to just watch how you're eating enough so
18:04
Speaker 1: you don't have very much food waste. Let's talk food
18:07
Speaker 1: waste finally. Uh in developing countries, post harvest losses of
18:12
Speaker 1: food grains can reach his high dude, in developing countries
18:19
Speaker 1: and that a sad statistic. Yeah, because one of the
18:22
Speaker 1: things that makes that so sad, Chuck is that that
18:25
Speaker 1: food has been harvested and is ready to go. So
18:30
Speaker 1: not only is it ready to go, it just doesn't
18:33
Speaker 1: make it to somebody's stomach. Um, all of the energy
18:38
Speaker 1: used to produce, harvest, and transport that food has already
18:44
Speaker 1: been used as well. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
18:45
Speaker 1: So that's a huge waste there too. It's not just
18:48
Speaker 1: food waste. You add a double bummer onto every bummer
18:50
Speaker 1: that I express. I'm good at it. The US spends
18:54
Speaker 1: about a billion dollars a year to dispose of food
18:57
Speaker 1: waste in this country, a billion dollars a year, and
19:00
Speaker 1: the e p A says that food leftovers are the
19:02
Speaker 1: single largest part of our waste stream by weight. Right,
19:07
Speaker 1: They make up about twelve percent of municipal landfills, which
19:11
Speaker 1: are a pretty awful word in and of themselves, because
19:14
Speaker 1: municipal landfills are um responsible for about thirty four of
19:19
Speaker 1: methane emissions globally, or at least in the US, and
19:24
Speaker 1: methane is twenty one times more damaging as a greenhouse
19:27
Speaker 1: gas than CEO two. Yeah, and all that food waste
19:30
Speaker 1: is producing like tons of methane. Yeah, which is I
19:33
Speaker 1: don't understand why we're not trapping that methane and burning
19:36
Speaker 1: it off as energy. I know there are some pilot projects,
19:39
Speaker 1: but I don't understand why it's not a bigger thing. Now. Yeah,
19:43
Speaker 1: didn't we study something about calparts? Yeah, I saw that.
19:47
Speaker 1: I seem that rings a bell from the past. Yeah.
19:50
Speaker 1: Livestock is a huge contributor to methane emissions. Um, and
19:55
Speaker 1: nobody knows what to do about it. But there were
19:57
Speaker 1: plans to kind of try to trap it and burn
19:58
Speaker 1: it for electricity. I think it was a farmer who
20:01
Speaker 1: was doing he was using cow poop or something. I
20:03
Speaker 1: think that Dirty Jobs episode did something like that. I
20:06
Speaker 1: definitely remember looking at that. Um. But I agree, methane,
20:09
Speaker 1: let's trap it. Hey there's a T shirt. So yeah.
20:14
Speaker 1: So food waste is a I thought it was the
20:17
Speaker 1: potential was increased without a refrigerator. You've opened my eyes here. Um.
20:23
Speaker 1: But another those those double bummers that I did, add
20:26
Speaker 1: the more packaging and more trips to the store. Um. Again,
20:30
Speaker 1: if you have a if you lived near a store,
20:34
Speaker 1: you can bike too or something like that. Um that
20:37
Speaker 1: gets around that. And then also if you are one
20:40
Speaker 1: of those zero waste people, like have you heard of
20:42
Speaker 1: B Johnson? Yeah, she's pretty remarkable. What's her website? Uh?
20:47
Speaker 1: It is Zero Waste Home. Yeah, she's one of these
20:51
Speaker 1: people that is doing like the family experiment, like let's
20:55
Speaker 1: see what we can really do and putting it, putting
20:59
Speaker 1: it on a blog. She um. I think her family
21:01
Speaker 1: is the one that has produced a court of waste
21:06
Speaker 1: in a year, a court of trash in a in
21:08
Speaker 1: a year. Everything else is reused. She has five rs.
21:11
Speaker 1: You think your three rs are worthwhile? Reduce, reuse, recycle,
21:15
Speaker 1: what or her other to refuse? So she's saying that
21:19
Speaker 1: even if it's free, you know that free frisbee the
21:21
Speaker 1: chiropractor gives you, say you don't want it? I do
21:24
Speaker 1: that a lot. Actually, I don't want a lot of
21:26
Speaker 1: that junk. Okay. So you're in line with this reduce,
21:29
Speaker 1: which would be you know, say, using your own, um,
21:34
Speaker 1: your own grocery bags. Oh sure, yeah, so you're reducing
21:38
Speaker 1: the use of the store's grocery bags. Reuse. So don't
21:43
Speaker 1: throw your own grocery bag away right, use it again? Uh? Recycle, Yes,
21:48
Speaker 1: you've heard of this one. And then rot chuck rot
21:53
Speaker 1: like rotten h If you're not gonna do this, I
21:56
Speaker 1: think So that's the last one. That's you mean by rot,
22:00
Speaker 1: I'm sure composted. Yeah, And like you said about the
22:04
Speaker 1: people that like I want to go without a fridge,
22:06
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go to the grocery store every ten
22:08
Speaker 1: minutes to get a packet of mayonnaise. I don't think
22:10
Speaker 1: that's the case. Like, I bet a lot of those
22:12
Speaker 1: people are growing food uh in their gardens and sharecome
22:15
Speaker 1: posting and like probably not doing that. And Plus also
22:18
Speaker 1: she points out b Johnson points out that, um, a
22:21
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that we would consider food waste,
22:24
Speaker 1: like you know, grocery stores, food waste to me is
22:27
Speaker 1: a I think we should do a whole podcast on it.
22:29
Speaker 1: It is fascinating, mind boggling the amount of waste we produce,
22:35
Speaker 1: food waste. I've read that something like a third a
22:39
Speaker 1: third of all of the food in the world goes
22:42
Speaker 1: to waste one way or another, either like in the
22:45
Speaker 1: developing world, doesn't make it after being prasted. UM, food
22:49
Speaker 1: waste from the United States. In the grocery stores in
22:53
Speaker 1: the US, there's any kind of cosmetic imperfection, if it's
22:56
Speaker 1: not pretty enough, they just throw it away. There's nothing
22:58
Speaker 1: wrong with it, but it'll just get tossed. Yeah, that's
23:01
Speaker 1: I don't think I would like to know what goes
23:02
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes of like a huge grocery chain.
23:05
Speaker 1: I think we need to get to the bottom of
23:06
Speaker 1: it an expose perhaps, But but b. Johnson points out, UM,
23:11
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff that even people at home
23:13
Speaker 1: would consider wasted spoiled food, UM, can be reused. So
23:18
Speaker 1: like if you have a bunch of stale bread, make
23:19
Speaker 1: bread pudding. Um, if you have some will to lettuce,
23:23
Speaker 1: drop it in an ice bath and it wakes back
23:25
Speaker 1: up still bread to the birds. That's nice, Like when
23:30
Speaker 1: I have moldy bread and always just like go out
23:32
Speaker 1: and throw it and then do you eat the birds afterwards?
23:35
Speaker 1: Are you like raising them? Yeah? I get my baby gun.
23:40
Speaker 1: Don't even need because you just teach them to eat
23:43
Speaker 1: out of your hand and then grab them, snap the
23:45
Speaker 1: little neck, and you got brown thrasher for dinner. That's
23:49
Speaker 1: our state bird. We get in trouble for that, would we? Yeah,
23:52
Speaker 1: you can't kill your state bird. I figured it was
23:55
Speaker 1: the state bird because it was the tastiest bird. I
23:58
Speaker 1: don't think so. So you dug this up. This is
24:01
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, UM, if you want to talk about people
24:05
Speaker 1: really go in the extra mile to not have a
24:08
Speaker 1: carbon footprint. Some folks are making on their own shoes
24:13
Speaker 1: out of old tires and old jeans and hemp. Of course,
24:17
Speaker 1: not much arch support though apparently right it's sort of
24:20
Speaker 1: like a moccasin. I would imagine you can eat your
24:23
Speaker 1: weeds in your yard if you're into that. Um, A
24:26
Speaker 1: lot of edible weeds like garlic, mustard or chickweed. Yeah,
24:29
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what's a weed? But some plant that
24:32
Speaker 1: we decided we didn't want. Yeah. I read something somewhere
24:36
Speaker 1: about the human diet. How um, it's become so narrow.
24:41
Speaker 1: We used to eat a lot more stuff that, a
24:43
Speaker 1: lot more weeds, um, and as a result, our health
24:47
Speaker 1: was a lot better. Yeah. The bitter, I think we
24:50
Speaker 1: talked about it before. Have you Have you gotten to
24:52
Speaker 1: the point to where everything we talked about rings a bell?
24:57
Speaker 1: Like we've mentioned everything before you, I have a world
25:00
Speaker 1: is getting narrower. But um, I feel like we've talked
25:03
Speaker 1: about before. The bitter the plant, the healthier it it
25:07
Speaker 1: tends to be. And I think you said also bitterness
25:10
Speaker 1: though also um suggests that it's poisonous too. Well, that
25:15
Speaker 1: is part of the edibility test and You shouldn't just
25:17
Speaker 1: go in your yard and just pull a bunch of
25:19
Speaker 1: weeds and eat them. Not everything is edible. Dying is
25:22
Speaker 1: not that great. Oh but if you do have edible
25:25
Speaker 1: weeds and you want to add them as in your
25:28
Speaker 1: salads or something, that's that's something that some people do.
25:32
Speaker 1: Some people. Some people use old license plates to side
25:35
Speaker 1: their houses. Is that true? It's in this article, of
25:39
Speaker 1: course it's true. I bet you, I bet you. That's
25:42
Speaker 1: the thing. I could see that, and you know what,
25:44
Speaker 1: why not, that's they're just going to waste, you know,
25:49
Speaker 1: all license plates. We got a birdhouse made out of
25:51
Speaker 1: license plates. Oh, those are cute. That's all right. We
25:54
Speaker 1: got it because it was all right Ohio, California and Georgia,
25:58
Speaker 1: which was Emily's first eights, which is kind of weird. Triumpt.
26:01
Speaker 1: I gotta have this. Do you use it for bb
26:04
Speaker 1: gun practice? No, that's just birds. Um. You know. I
26:09
Speaker 1: shot an animal once in my life and it was
26:12
Speaker 1: one of the worst things that ever happened to me.
26:14
Speaker 1: I was too young, I gotta be begun, and I
26:17
Speaker 1: was tired of shooting cans, so I shot a squirrel
26:21
Speaker 1: and it haunts me to this day. And I'm not
26:24
Speaker 1: pooping hunters. If you're into that, that's fine. I'm just
26:26
Speaker 1: not into it. So I shot a squirrel when I
26:28
Speaker 1: was twelve, You're a haunted I want to come clean.
26:31
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, So what's this poop burger thing? I
26:35
Speaker 1: couldn't find any any corroborating evidence, but basically, there was
26:38
Speaker 1: a a story that popped up on a couple of
26:40
Speaker 1: blogs about a Japanese scientist who have basically converted human
26:44
Speaker 1: feces into an edible burger. And the two blog posts
26:49
Speaker 1: I saw, we're basically piggybacking off of each other, and
26:53
Speaker 1: the original source would lead to a four or four era,
26:57
Speaker 1: So I think it's I think the American press accidentally
27:01
Speaker 1: picked up a yes Man article or something like that.
27:04
Speaker 1: You know, well, how about if if anyone can corroborate corroborate.
27:08
Speaker 1: I had the worst time with that word. Can corroborate? Yeah,
27:13
Speaker 1: I can't never say the word right, corroborate, corober rate,
27:18
Speaker 1: corrobor rate, corrobor rate. There you go. Can we put
27:21
Speaker 1: a ding ding ding in their press production? So if
27:24
Speaker 1: anyone can let us know that this story is true,
27:27
Speaker 1: then uh yeah, yeah, I'd love to know that. Yeah,
27:29
Speaker 1: let us know there are speaking of fecal material though. Chuck.
27:34
Speaker 1: There there was also this green movement to give up
27:37
Speaker 1: toilet paper. Oh I heard about that. Do you remember
27:39
Speaker 1: that huge ball in Uh that was the size of
27:42
Speaker 1: a school bus that was made of um like handy
27:45
Speaker 1: wipes and fat in London. I don't remember that. It
27:50
Speaker 1: was this fatty deposit made up of grease and used
27:55
Speaker 1: handy white. Is it like an art project? No, it
27:57
Speaker 1: was trapped in the London sewer system. Okay, I thought
28:01
Speaker 1: display or something. No, God, no, no, I don't remember that.
28:04
Speaker 1: That's it was. It was within the last year. Um. Well, anyway,
28:10
Speaker 1: I guess some people are taking this even further and saying,
28:13
Speaker 1: not even toilet paper will touch my bottom. Instead, I'm
28:16
Speaker 1: going to use um basically diapers. Oh, just like cloth squares.
28:21
Speaker 1: So you keep a pail of clean ones on one
28:24
Speaker 1: side and a dirty pail on the other, and then
28:28
Speaker 1: you just wash the poopy ones and you're green. Huh.
28:36
Speaker 1: I don't think I will go that far. I don't think,
28:38
Speaker 1: but I am interested in a in a bid day
28:41
Speaker 1: because I do think toilet paper is disgusting, like taking dry,
28:45
Speaker 1: thin paper and wiping poop from your skin. It I
28:49
Speaker 1: don't get it, and it's never made sense to me really,
28:52
Speaker 1: even as a child. Well no, since I got grown
28:55
Speaker 1: enough to realize that moisture is a pretty nice thing
28:58
Speaker 1: to happen if you're cleaning poop. I just put a
29:00
Speaker 1: little vasseline in there, so a bid day, I'd be
29:05
Speaker 1: into a bid day, okay, And I'm exclusively with the
29:08
Speaker 1: wet wipes. Well, you're contributing to the huge fat deposit
29:13
Speaker 1: ball and what it was made up? Even those that
29:16
Speaker 1: say they're fleshable, it's it's probably a bunch of bunk.
29:18
Speaker 1: The London thing proves it. It's bunk. And for some reason,
29:22
Speaker 1: I don't remember why, but like it was almost exclusively
29:25
Speaker 1: wet wipes and fat grease, like they were attracted to
29:31
Speaker 1: one another or something like that. Maybe, So I don't
29:33
Speaker 1: understand it all right. Do you think they'd be like
29:35
Speaker 1: a squirrel or the remnants of a squirrel right in
29:41
Speaker 1: there something? But no, it's just wet wipes and grease.
29:46
Speaker 1: Holy cal well, I got let's get this one back
29:48
Speaker 1: on the rails and finish it up. Huh. I don't
29:51
Speaker 1: have anything else? You did you see the Albert Einstein refrigerator.
29:54
Speaker 1: Oh that's like no electricity whatsoever. That makes sense. Well,
29:59
Speaker 1: it does need a hours of heat. Um. But I
30:03
Speaker 1: think Einstein and one of his former students developed a
30:06
Speaker 1: refrigerator that has no moving parts. Requires it could be
30:11
Speaker 1: run on solar energy, but basically it uses um. You know,
30:15
Speaker 1: when you lower the pressure and the atmosphere pressure of something,
30:19
Speaker 1: it's boiling temperature as well. Uh. And then when you
30:23
Speaker 1: boil something, it sucks energy out of the surrounding atmosphere
30:25
Speaker 1: and lowers the temperature. That's basically this kind of Rube
30:29
Speaker 1: Goldberg esque Einstein invention that this guy in Oxford was
30:34
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild. He made a test pilot version of it,
30:39
Speaker 1: but it's like not very efficient. I think that's a
30:42
Speaker 1: new not a new thing, but a lot I've seen
30:44
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff lately about people remaking like some
30:47
Speaker 1: early inventions that were never able to be properly made. Yeah,
30:50
Speaker 1: I think you were talking about that, like Da Vinci
30:52
Speaker 1: stuff that. Yeah, there's a TV show where they definitely
30:57
Speaker 1: did the Da Vinci stuff, but those were mainly like
31:00
Speaker 1: pens and things. But I did see a video the
31:02
Speaker 1: other day someone made a Da Vinci a musical instrument
31:05
Speaker 1: that Da Vinci invented that was never properly made, and
31:08
Speaker 1: it was look like a played like a piano, but
31:11
Speaker 1: it sounded like strings and it was it was really
31:14
Speaker 1: kind of awesome. So that's a long way of saying,
31:17
Speaker 1: build this fridge behind the Einstein fridge. Well, there's other
31:21
Speaker 1: things you can do too. If you have a fridge
31:23
Speaker 1: and you don't feel like giving up your fridge. If
31:25
Speaker 1: you have a fridge that's older than two thousand, yeah,
31:28
Speaker 1: and you have a little bit of dope, go buy
31:30
Speaker 1: an energy star rated one. Yeah. Throw that other one
31:32
Speaker 1: in the landfill, right. Um, No use it as like
31:36
Speaker 1: a planter or something out in your backyard to grow
31:38
Speaker 1: food in. Yeah. You can always sell a fridge. Yeah,
31:41
Speaker 1: like any appliance that works, you can sell to somebody.
31:45
Speaker 1: You just want to take the door off to make
31:46
Speaker 1: sure no little kids get trapped in it or Indiana
31:48
Speaker 1: Jones's right. Um. You also, if you do have an
31:52
Speaker 1: energy star rated fridge, you want to clean the coils
31:55
Speaker 1: off once a year. That will keep it running efficiently,
31:58
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um, you want to think about what you're
32:00
Speaker 1: going to open the fridge to get, so you don't
32:03
Speaker 1: just stand there with the fridge open like a slack
32:06
Speaker 1: jawed yokel like everybody does. And then apparently if you
32:10
Speaker 1: keep your fridge fairly stocked um, that will allow it
32:13
Speaker 1: to um the temperature to to bounce back to where
32:17
Speaker 1: it needs to be. It has less um atmosphere. Cool
32:22
Speaker 1: my fridge. You have to open to get the water,
32:25
Speaker 1: filtered water, which really bugs me. It's not like in
32:28
Speaker 1: the outside of the door. I've never seen that. Yeah,
32:32
Speaker 1: you just live in a cuckoo house. You've got cauliflower.
32:36
Speaker 1: You got to open the door to get the water.
32:38
Speaker 1: That cilantro sitting and cups all over the house. That's
32:41
Speaker 1: a good idea. I've tried that, but put it in
32:43
Speaker 1: the fridge and it just wrecks it. So I guess
32:45
Speaker 1: maybe just leaving it out. I mean, it would lasts
32:47
Speaker 1: for quite a while. Man, I love that stuff. Don't
32:50
Speaker 1: you feel bad for people who taste dish soap when
32:53
Speaker 1: they eat cilantro? Yeah? I love cilantro too, Mandy. Well,
32:57
Speaker 1: let's it about cilantro. It's you want to learn more
33:00
Speaker 1: about it. You can type the word into the search
33:04
Speaker 1: part how stuff works, and you can also type in
33:07
Speaker 1: can I go without a refrigerator in the search barneill
33:09
Speaker 1: bring this article up. Uh, And since I said search bar,
33:12
Speaker 1: that means it's time for the listener mayor Yeah, I'm
33:17
Speaker 1: gonna call this from one of our law enforcement officers. Hey, guys,
33:22
Speaker 1: my name is Andy M a police officer for a
33:24
Speaker 1: law enforcement agency in St. Louis, Missouri area. Go Cardinals.
33:29
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the show and appreciate the
33:31
Speaker 1: always new, interesting topics and discussions. And I've noticed that
33:34
Speaker 1: you seem to have an affinity for law enforcement related topics,
33:38
Speaker 1: which is true. You definitely do you love them. I
33:42
Speaker 1: would just listen. I think I wanted to be a
33:44
Speaker 1: cop or something. Maybe you've been a security card that's
33:48
Speaker 1: not the same. I was just listening to the meth
33:50
Speaker 1: podcast and notice that you mentioned one of the first
33:54
Speaker 1: shake and bake incidences, and that's a mobile meth lab.
33:57
Speaker 1: Apparently that's like the couple and go, which occurred actually
34:01
Speaker 1: in my precinct at a Walmart. Remember we talked about that.
34:04
Speaker 1: Um I was not yet employed there, but I know
34:06
Speaker 1: one of the officers, uh. I know the officer that
34:08
Speaker 1: responded what I understand, a woman was shop lifting was
34:11
Speaker 1: in custody of the loss prevention officers when they called
34:15
Speaker 1: for police assistance. My now coworker arrested her and in
34:18
Speaker 1: the process discovered a gatorade bottle in her purse, which
34:21
Speaker 1: is being used as a mobile meth lab. That's so crazy.
34:24
Speaker 1: It is very crazy. Math usage in the area that
34:27
Speaker 1: I work in is rampant, and only having been on
34:29
Speaker 1: the force lesson a year, I've already handled two meth
34:32
Speaker 1: labs of my own. Having seen firsthand some of the
34:35
Speaker 1: reactions to meth that these folks have, I will say
34:37
Speaker 1: that you were pretty much right on, guys. Additionally, another
34:40
Speaker 1: unfortunate situation is that, uh, where there is a meth lab,
34:45
Speaker 1: typically there are children. One of my meth labs was
34:48
Speaker 1: also home to seven kids. It's a really sad sight
34:50
Speaker 1: to see. You remember that one episode of Breaking Bad,
34:53
Speaker 1: which one the one where Pinkman basically gets kidnapped by
34:57
Speaker 1: those methodics who robbed t m Machine, And typically you
35:02
Speaker 1: will find that the parents have little interest in their
35:04
Speaker 1: children and pay them very little attention in general. Well,
35:07
Speaker 1: of course, because they're all interested in using math. It's
35:11
Speaker 1: kind of a one track mind situation. So it makes
35:16
Speaker 1: you appreciate non Matthews versus what Andy says. So thanks
35:21
Speaker 1: Andy officer. You know you wrap that up at the
35:23
Speaker 1: end and expanked it on the bottom. He had he
35:25
Speaker 1: had another part, So that might have read awkward A
35:27
Speaker 1: suggestion which I can cut out, but I may. I
35:30
Speaker 1: took the suggestion, but I just didn't read it. Is
35:32
Speaker 1: it a mystery suggestion? Then? Um? Yeah, maybe I'm surprise you. Well,
35:36
Speaker 1: if you want to send us a mystery suggestion, we
35:38
Speaker 1: are welcome to those. You can tweet to us at
35:40
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can join us on
35:43
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slafe Stuff you Should Know. You can
35:46
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
35:50
Speaker 1: and you can hang out with us at our nice
35:52
Speaker 1: little warm home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
35:56
Speaker 1: dot you. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
36:04
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. Hey, Netflix streams TV
36:15
Speaker 1: shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device,
36:19
Speaker 1: or game console. You can get a thirty day free
36:21
Speaker 1: trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot com slash
36:25
Speaker 1: stuff and sign up now.