False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Conventional materials need to be recycled 
after use and replaced by sustainable 
alternatives.
There’s a single household item that has 
contributed more to global warming than cows 
and planes combined, and you’re using it daily: 
your fridge. Most refrigerators, supermarket 
cases and air conditioners use cooling 
chemicals that are extremely harmful to the 
climate. In fact, a unit of the chemical used in 
fridges releases 9,000 times more heat into the 
atmosphere than a single CO2 molecule. 
The dominant chemical used for refrigeration 
nowadays is called hydrofluorocarbon, or HFC. 
And at an international conference in 2016, 170 
countries agreed that HFCs are so adversely 

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affecting our climate that they need to be phased 
out completely by 2024. However, since the 
danger of refrigerants is greatest at disposal, 
their removal from circulation will need to be 
carefully monitored. But if done correctly, 
phasing out HCFs and other harmful refrigerants 
by 2050 could reduce carbon emissions by 90 
gigatons, making it the number one solution to 
climate change. Scientists estimate that this 
measure alone will reduce global warming by a 
full degree Fahrenheit. 
Refrigerants aren’t the only everyday materials 
that we need to phase out, however. Cement 
and plastic are also ubiquitous substances that 
stand to be replaced by more climate-friendly 
alternatives. Conventional cement is made from 
decarbonizing limestone, a process that, as the 
name betrays, causes carbon emissions. One 
alternative method is to make cement from the 
fly ash produced by burning coal, which 
sidesteps decarbonization and drastically lowers 
emissions. Plastic, meanwhile, could be made 
from food or paper waste instead of fossil fuels.
Another part of the production chain to consider 
is what happens to products when they’ve 
served their purpose. The dominant way this is 
done is, of course, via household and industrial 
recycling, where food, yard waste, paper, 
cardboard, metals, clothes and wood are 
collected and put to use again in the form of 
compost, biofuel and raw material. 
One way to encourage recycling over 
conventional disposal is via governmental policy. 
San 
Francisco, 
for 
example, 
charges 
households for carrying away garbage for 
landfill, but takes away recycling material for 
free.