PP22: A chilling prospect

Almost ten years ago now there was a mini media storm about Internet fridges and all the amazing things they might do. The idea flopped, yet their time will come, and the government should do all it can to encourage their revival. The reason being that they have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of food we buy, then don’t eat in time and end up throwing away. I am guilty of this all the time and I would estimate that I throw away around 1/3 of my shopping bill directly in the bin. A quick web search gives me the figure of £8bn that we annually throw straight into our nearest landfill. The Guardian suggests this is equivalent of one in three of our shopping bags.

All it takes is a little planning and imagination and this shocking waste can be cut dramatically. Yet I don’t know anyone that is actually any good at doing these things on a regular basis.

Internet fridges could do all these things for us. By either making us scan in all our items or better yet, using RFID to recognise what is lurking at the back of the fridge our very clever fridges could suggest recipes for us that will use what we have. They could also store meal plans for us and order in the ingredients required. We could end up downloading the ‘Jamie Oliver’ application and creating all kinds of pukka meals with the ingredients we find waiting on our doorstep when we get back from work.

Supermarkets should push this technology now and make sure it’s their delivery services we are using. I envisage some Microsoft style court action over the right to use a ‘Sainsburys’ fridge’ to buy from the Tesco’s website and so on. What’s more, the wide scale uptake of new fridges will cut emissions anyway because the older style fridges are like having mini coal power stations in your kitchen. Getting funky new ‘ifreeze’ technology or whatever, into peoples homes should be considered something of a priority. The savings to be made are staggering in scale and promise to greatly benefit those on lower incomes.

Getting this technology into their homes is the trick. An incentive to the industry could come in the form of a subsidy, or small grants to those that want to buy them. Local councils could offer vouchers for new fridges in exchange for a household handing in their old one for a safe disposal. Bring on the interactive fridge.