January 2, 2014 • 36 mins
Do you know that hulking refrigerator in your kitchen emits CO2 thanks to the electricity it uses each year? It's a comparatively small amount, in truth, but enough that some people have foresworn their fridge and adopted a life without one. Included are bonus food storage tips.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from how stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,
and she's eating stalks of broccoli. Yes, not the florette's
(00:21):
eating chunky trunk. She throws the floretts away. It's bizarre. No,
she's not into food waste, so she's eating every single bit.
She's just munching on it like a rabbit over there. Oh,
I see you know. Oh no that I look more
close to see that. You're right. That wasn't just a
clever lead into what will be a great intro from you. No,
that was the intro. Okay, Jerry doesn't waste food, people, No,
(00:43):
food waste is a terrible thing. And we're we're that's
that's only part of the tip of the iceberg of
this subject that we're about to touch on the tip
of the ice box. This is a huge, rambling, enormous
topic that we're about to tackle. See, Chuck, you've heard
of green eco friendliness. Yeah, yeah, we like eco consciousness.
(01:05):
You'd like to push that racket when we can. Yeah,
what said is like more and more today it seems
to be. Well, there's parts that have becoming green, like
people recycle, and like recycling is the thing now, it's
not going anywhere. Like if you don't recycle, now you're
kind of like one of those people that throws cigarettes
out the window. Yeah, that's pretty bad too. You know
a lot of people still do that. Yeah, but I
(01:27):
think not to get off on my high horse, but
I think a lot of the people that toss the
cigarettes out the window probably like would say, if someone
through a McDonald's back out the window, they'd be like,
how can you do that? Yeah, Like they justify cigarettes somehow.
I've seen that people throw those things out, like eco
friendly people. I think, just the eco friendly smokers, I
think justify that because it's like, wow, you still want
(01:49):
a cigarette in your car, you rite, dude, because they
stink there will end up in a in a lake
or something. A birdle eat it. Did you know that?
I was at the Guess station the other day and
I saw a guy driving off and as he drove off,
he held his hand out the window and released a
stack of apparently losing lottery tickets a stay. I'm talking
(02:12):
like thirty just right into the parking lot. I couldn't
believe my eyes. I mean it's a joke now literally
on Anchorman in the original anchor Man, when they finish
all of their McDonald's, they just throw all their stuff,
like in the park and the Madman had one of
those two they have like a family picnic, and afterward
they gathered up their stuff and just like picked up
(02:32):
the mincot and throw all the trash out, and we're like,
let's go right exactly That's how it used to be, though. Yeah,
isn't that weird that that used to be a thing
that it's okay to throw trash on the ground, and
it's it's not okay, but some people still do it.
I've seen it, right, Um. But the point is, I
am making a point here. Believe it or not, there
is some parts of the green movement that have become entrenched,
(02:56):
ensconced in the mainstream culture, and it's having an act,
it's having a real factor. It's not even enough of
an effect. We're all headed for global catastrophe eventually. Um.
But when we when we think about the green movement now,
it almost seems past tense like it was. There's parts
of it that seemed like a bit of a fad,
(03:17):
you know what I mean, like being green? How green
can you go? Like what can you do? And uh,
there was this thing that kind of popped up in
two thousand nine because of a New York Times article, um,
where people were starting to give up the refrigerators as
part of the green movement to be green to basically
(03:39):
like say I'm greener than now. You get the impression
that that's what they're doing. Ultimately, they're saying, no, it's
just one last thing that's using up um electricity, so
it's saving CEO two emissions. But it seems to me
to fall along the line of the people who like
had themselves sterilized so they couldn't contribute to the growing population,
(04:01):
global population. You're saying, those are about the same, it
seems to me, although the the refrigerator one is far
more reversible because you just go and buy a refrigerator
and plug it in. Yeah, bam, I'm back baby. Well
you can reverse your your procedure to not have kids
(04:21):
to these days. Yeah, I think it's kind of it's
a roll of the dice. Oh really was if it'll
work again? Oh? I thought you could get it reversion
up in the sweat. They can, you know, reverse it,
but it doesn't necessarily work. Okay, I thought that's pretty good.
All right, man, that was a sidebar. Uh So should
(04:42):
we talk about food waste? Well, let's talk about this
refrigerator thing. You're really fixated on the food waste thing,
aren't you. Well it's a big part of whether or
not you can go without a fridge. Well, let's let's
talk about what happens or why people go without a fridge. First,
Chuck could feel bear with me. So people are pulling
the plugs on these refrigers? Are they wearing two thousand
nine or at least three people were in two thousand
(05:02):
nine one in Canada? I think yeah? Um, And but
I get the impression from reading the original New York
Times article that there were there were. It was this
kind of the sub thing among the green It wasn't
all the rage, No, like bamboo flooring a cork flooring. No.
And the New York Times article pointed out that it
(05:23):
seems to be a dividing line among green the eco
conscious in the eco crazy. Yeah, like what where some
people say that's preposterous, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
and then other people were like, look at how far
I'm willing to go to be green. So what's the
what's the benefit of all that? Well, a refrigerator uses electricity,
(05:45):
and I guess we can give you a couple of
stats to bring it all home for you. Typical fridge
post two thousand uses about four fifty k watts per year. Yeah,
that's thanks to the Energy Star ratings. Yeah, which is
better than it used to be for sure. Um. And
if you want to translate that into uh, cheeseburgers, no
way into miles driven in your car, because we're talking
(06:10):
about the emission of CEO two. Uh, that's about eight
hundred miles driving a car, about eight hundred miles depending
on what kind of mile do you get, because really
it's a gallons of gas. Uh. Yeah. So even then
the article they point out that it's kind of low
on the list. It ranks behind closed dryer, central air
(06:33):
in your furnace. Yeah, your furnace is like six thousand
kilowats a year. It's amazing. So you're you're a refrigerator.
UM's four d and fifty kilowat hours of electricity per year.
So it's not even super high up in your household. No,
it's nowhere near. But I think the people who are
pulling the plugs on these refrigerators are saying every little
bit counts. Yeah, and they probably have already taken other
(06:57):
green precautions, like they probably don't run their furnace like this,
you know, like they might have a pot belly stuff.
They better not if they use a normal old like yeah,
terrible electric furnace. They then I'm going to go to
their house and have a little chance like shaking outside
their house. Yet they're eating out of a glucooler, right,
(07:19):
and that's what they do. I mean, like when when
when you pull the plug on the fridge, I wish
I could just come up with another phrase that rolls
off the tongue. So I'm tired of saying that when
you go without a refrigerator, dee fridge, deefridge chuck nice.
When you de fridge um, you still need typically some
(07:39):
source of cooling inside of your home, something that can
keep some food items from perishing, because we apparently refrigerate
a lot of stuff we don't need to. That is true. Yeah,
you can keep that catch up the mustard out on
the counter, hot sauce. I've read it goes three years
in a regular pantry. Chi just keep it out there. Yeah,
(08:01):
we kept growing up, kept a lot of stuff out
of the fridge, and not for any reason other than
that's just how it was in my house. Like I
remember butter like in a tray on the counter. Butter
is better that way. Room tip. Oh man, are you
kidding me? Yeah, just like it's already it's so spread herble.
I keep mine in the fridge just to keep it
longer because I don't need that much butter. But man,
(08:23):
if you go to a restaurant and they give you
butter and it's cold, just like, what do you do?
It's literally Emily's biggest pet peeve is well, I agree
with cold rolls with cold butter or hot rolls with
cold Yeah, because you get the hot rolls, you think
this place knows what they're doing, and you get this
cold pad of butter. So I've developed a technique, Um,
(08:45):
you know, the under the arm pit method. But well
it's close. It's it's you just cut your hands and
you put a couple of those little foil wrap you
want to make sure it's wrapped in foil pats. Of
cold butter and you heat them up pretty quick. And
I'll tell you what, you make some friends around the
table if you eat somebody's butter up for him because
nobody likes cold button. Then you hand them a little
butter pat and you're like, here, take this, it's my
(09:07):
gift to you. I like it when they just have
a little olive oil and balstomac vinegar. You know that's
good too. But I like good room temperature butter, especially
like milk fat content or more good. Um. So, like
I said, I like butter out we left um remember
certain condiments being left out? What about fruits and vegetables? Um? Yeah,
(09:29):
like a lot of vegetables. I don't refrigerate now, like
I never refrigerate peppers and onions, and well you don't
want to. If you do refrigerate an onion, it will
last longer. But if you're going to use it eat,
you want to take it out of your refrigerator and
bring it up to room temperature before you cook with
it or use it in food, because it takes a
lot of the temperature white. But that's also a tip
(09:51):
if you hate crying. Um, because if you cut a
cold onion, the enzyme that eventually sets off the chain
reaction that makes you cry is contained. It's not as volatile.
I've noticed that. So that's your your tip from Chuck
and Josh my eyes killed me too. With onions, it
(10:12):
depends only and it's not just like oh it's little tears.
It's like massive burning. It's really bad. Really Yeah, yeah,
you should super sensitive. I did it. Don't be dumb
on it. That explains exactly what's going on with you.
I've seen that, Okay, so you know, um so yeah,
a lot of the vegetables I don't keep like it
depends on when I'm gonna eat it. If I bring
home some like a big head of cauliflower, I'll keep
(10:34):
that out in the fruit basket for a couple of days.
I've never seen that before in my entire life. Cauliflower out.
I've only seen it in like a crisper drawer. Yeah,
I've left cauliflower and broccoli out like green onions and
can lemongrass, garlic. Of course, potatoes don't refrigerate. I think
(10:56):
I would like stop short and point if I saw
like cauliflower out and like the root pads, be like,
what is that? That's just fine. I haven't even been
to your house. I didn't notice that. Well, I mean
I don't always have, had you gone through the col yeah,
just eating it. Um. Tomatoes are another one too, there
they'll last longer in the fridge if you're gonna cook
with them. You want to bring up to your room temperature.
(11:16):
Some stuff you just don't want to refrigerate. Potatoes, apparently
you don't do very well in the fridge. You put
them in a nice brown paper sack in your pantry
away from the sunlight. They keep for a really long time. Yeah,
you know, Jerry, I think Jerry showed me the little
trick was that you with the cilantro Jerry and the yep,
Oh what I need to notice because they eat a
lot of cilantro. You the cilantro you don't use just
(11:38):
fill up a glass like half full of water and
just throw it in there and just leave it in
your out in your kitchen. Oh like the base of
it in the water and just stays fresh like super long.
And you know, the fridge can beat up cilantro after
like a day or two. I like your optimism, by
the way, thank you. Um. The avocado is what always
kills me though, I well, I I eat a lot
(12:00):
of avocado as well. It's hard to keep those fresh.
Tried a lot of tricks too. Well, here's here's your trick.
You're ready, okay, Oh you're cutting up an avocado and like, yeah,
that's it for the avocado. I have no trick for that. Well,
what do you eat the whole? Yeah, pretty much. I
don't understand what. Well, I don't know. I don't like
eat the skin and everything. No, that's not what I mean.
(12:22):
It's like once I couldn't do an avocado, all of
that avocado is about to be consumed by me. So
that's the tip. Yeah, But I do have another tip
for you though, with avocados. You know how you go
to the store and you like squeeze them, and you
you you can find one out of a hundred and
fifty that's squeeze a bowls. Pretty annoying, it is, But
that squeezed one is gonna be nasty and bruised and
(12:44):
just disgusting. There's gonna be basically like rot wherever you
and everybody else squeeze that avocado. So you can have
a lot less useable avocado. So you want to get
one that you can't squeeze. It's so firm it can't
be squeezed well. But then you just have to wait
a few days to eat it. You can wait one day,
it's all it takes, my friend. And here's how. You
take a brown paper bag and buy a banana, and
(13:07):
you put the banana and the avocados in the brown
paper bag. Roll it up pretty tight, but leave a
little space in there. And they do it, and the
game right, they get it on. Uh, and what happens
is the avocados ripening. Really Yeah. The the banana as
it ripens, well, it puts off a gas um that
(13:27):
ripens the avocados. I'm gonna try that, and I'm not kidding.
Twelve to twenty four hours, you have totally ready avocados. Yeah,
because I like my avocados firm still. Oh, you're gonna
love this chuck and not mushy but not not hard,
but just firm. You're gonna thank me later. I'm excited
about your avocado experiences now. So there's plenty of stuff
(13:49):
that doesn't need refrigerating, So that's one way that people
can defridge. Yeah, this is turning into like food. One
on one with Josh and chuck. Yeah, I hope that's okay.
Um yeah, plenty of stuff that you don't have to refrigerate. Um,
but people still use some sort of cooling mechanism. Yeah,
like a cooler, Like if you have meats or dairy products. Um,
(14:12):
if you want to go without a fridge, most people
use a cooler. And the thing that annoy me with
this article, as they said, or they use a mini
freezer to make ice. I'm like, well, that's probably just
about as bad as you're stupid fridge. Well, it's pretty close.
So like one of those little chest freezers. Um, I
didn't see the size of it. Oh, a six point
four cubic feet chest freezer, which isn't big, but it's
(14:33):
not that small. Um. But apparently that's the that's the
thing that people who defridge use. That still uses two
kilowatt hours a year. So really, by unplugging your refrigerator
and using iNeST freezer, you're saving about fifteen gallons of
gas a year. Yeah. I don't know if that's your best, Like,
(14:54):
spend your time doing better things for the environment. I think,
Well again, I think people who do this are saying
I'll do this on top of stuff and then kind
of cleverly, if you ask me, they're using this the
ice chests to um, we'll basically fill up like a
two lead bottle of water which they didn't allow to
go to waste, the two leader bottle um, putting those
(15:15):
in the freezer chest, and then having like a separate
cooler that they put the frozen water bottles in to
keep cool their milk and their meats and stuff like that.
Uh yeah, and you know what, we're gonna talk about
some tips for shopping to accommodate in this lifestyle. But
first let's take a little message, right Okay, all right,
(15:40):
so you're talking about the cooler full of frozen bottles
of water to keep like your milk in some of
your dairy and stuff. But if you when you go
to the store, if you're gonna try and live this way,
you can't probably buy the gallons of milk unless you
really go through a lot of milk. You might want
to buy quartz of milk. You can't go to Sam's
Club and buy eight gallons of mayonnaise unless you eat
(16:03):
that pretty quickly. And if you should focus more attention
on your mayonnaise habits, then what you're doing for the environment,
So you're gonna have to buy smaller amounts of things,
which they say can cost a little more. But well, yeah,
if you're not wasting food though, Like if you added
up the food you waste, you're probably burning a lot
of money and there's just gonna be far less food
waste if you're buying in smaller amounts. Right. The other
(16:25):
the other side of that though is um if you're
you know, eco friendly or eco conscious, um, you're one
of the things that you're probably trying to avoid is
packaging as well. And if you buy a smaller amounts
of food, that means you buy more packages. Think about that.
And if you have smaller amounts of food, that means
you have to go to the store more often, and
(16:45):
then you may have to drive more often, which doesn't
matter if you're riding a bike or something like that,
but if you're driving a car, then you're burning those
gallons of gas that you might necessarily not have been anyway. Yeah,
you like you get in your old seventy to pick
up truck and drive the twelve miles to get like
a pint of Mannames, you have to stop and fill
(17:06):
up at least once during that. Uh. So, can we
talk a little bit about food waste though, Yeah, because
it's a it's a pretty big thing, Like if you
have no refrigerator, the chances of your food spoiling just
simply increase if you have no refrigerator. Well not so apparently,
(17:27):
according to a report, unless developed countries they have no refrigerators,
they experience less food spoilers. Bam, you just faced me,
because they're like, they're eating what they need. You know,
they're not going to Sam's Club and buying seven hundred
chicken McNuggets to put in the freezer. I hear that.
And I guess if somebody who defridges uses the developing
(17:50):
world as a model for their food consumption. Yeah, I
wonder what hang ups there are though that would keep
you from successfully doing that, or if it is just
entirely possible to just watch how you're eating enough so
you don't have very much food waste. Let's talk food
waste finally. Uh in developing countries, post harvest losses of
(18:12):
food grains can reach his high dude, in developing countries
and that a sad statistic. Yeah, because one of the
things that makes that so sad, Chuck is that that
food has been harvested and is ready to go. So
not only is it ready to go, it just doesn't
(18:33):
make it to somebody's stomach. Um, all of the energy
used to produce, harvest, and transport that food has already
been used as well. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
So that's a huge waste there too. It's not just
food waste. You add a double bummer onto every bummer
that I express. I'm good at it. The US spends
(18:54):
about a billion dollars a year to dispose of food
waste in this country, a billion dollars a year, and
the e p A says that food leftovers are the
single largest part of our waste stream by weight. Right,
They make up about twelve percent of municipal landfills, which
are a pretty awful word in and of themselves, because
municipal landfills are um responsible for about thirty four of
(19:19):
methane emissions globally, or at least in the US, and
methane is twenty one times more damaging as a greenhouse
gas than CEO two. Yeah, and all that food waste
is producing like tons of methane. Yeah, which is I
don't understand why we're not trapping that methane and burning
it off as energy. I know there are some pilot projects,
(19:39):
but I don't understand why it's not a bigger thing. Now. Yeah,
didn't we study something about calparts? Yeah, I saw that.
I seem that rings a bell from the past. Yeah.
Livestock is a huge contributor to methane emissions. Um, and
nobody knows what to do about it. But there were
plans to kind of try to trap it and burn
it for electricity. I think it was a farmer who
(20:01):
was doing he was using cow poop or something. I
think that Dirty Jobs episode did something like that. I
definitely remember looking at that. Um. But I agree, methane,
let's trap it. Hey there's a T shirt. So yeah.
So food waste is a I thought it was the
potential was increased without a refrigerator. You've opened my eyes here. Um.
(20:23):
But another those those double bummers that I did, add
the more packaging and more trips to the store. Um. Again,
if you have a if you lived near a store,
you can bike too or something like that. Um that
gets around that. And then also if you are one
of those zero waste people, like have you heard of
B Johnson? Yeah, she's pretty remarkable. What's her website? Uh?
(20:47):
It is Zero Waste Home. Yeah, she's one of these
people that is doing like the family experiment, like let's
see what we can really do and putting it, putting
it on a blog. She um. I think her family
is the one that has produced a court of waste
in a year, a court of trash in a in
(21:08):
a year. Everything else is reused. She has five rs.
You think your three rs are worthwhile? Reduce, reuse, recycle,
what or her other to refuse? So she's saying that
even if it's free, you know that free frisbee the
chiropractor gives you, say you don't want it? I do
that a lot. Actually, I don't want a lot of
that junk. Okay. So you're in line with this reduce,
(21:29):
which would be you know, say, using your own, um,
your own grocery bags. Oh sure, yeah, so you're reducing
the use of the store's grocery bags. Reuse. So don't
throw your own grocery bag away right, use it again? Uh? Recycle, Yes,
you've heard of this one. And then rot chuck rot
(21:53):
like rotten h If you're not gonna do this, I
think So that's the last one. That's you mean by rot,
I'm sure composted. Yeah, And like you said about the
people that like I want to go without a fridge,
but I'm gonna go to the grocery store every ten
minutes to get a packet of mayonnaise. I don't think
that's the case. Like, I bet a lot of those
people are growing food uh in their gardens and sharecome
(22:15):
posting and like probably not doing that. And Plus also
she points out b Johnson points out that, um, a
lot of the stuff that we would consider food waste,
like you know, grocery stores, food waste to me is
a I think we should do a whole podcast on it.
It is fascinating, mind boggling the amount of waste we produce,
food waste. I've read that something like a third a
(22:39):
third of all of the food in the world goes
to waste one way or another, either like in the
developing world, doesn't make it after being prasted. UM, food
waste from the United States. In the grocery stores in
the US, there's any kind of cosmetic imperfection, if it's
not pretty enough, they just throw it away. There's nothing
wrong with it, but it'll just get tossed. Yeah, that's
(23:01):
I don't think I would like to know what goes
on behind the scenes of like a huge grocery chain.
I think we need to get to the bottom of
it an expose perhaps, But but b. Johnson points out, UM,
a lot of this stuff that even people at home
would consider wasted spoiled food, UM, can be reused. So
like if you have a bunch of stale bread, make
bread pudding. Um, if you have some will to lettuce,
(23:23):
drop it in an ice bath and it wakes back
up still bread to the birds. That's nice, Like when
I have moldy bread and always just like go out
and throw it and then do you eat the birds afterwards?
Are you like raising them? Yeah? I get my baby gun.
Don't even need because you just teach them to eat
(23:43):
out of your hand and then grab them, snap the
little neck, and you got brown thrasher for dinner. That's
our state bird. We get in trouble for that, would we? Yeah,
you can't kill your state bird. I figured it was
the state bird because it was the tastiest bird. I
don't think so. So you dug this up. This is
pretty interesting, UM, if you want to talk about people
(24:05):
really go in the extra mile to not have a
carbon footprint. Some folks are making on their own shoes
out of old tires and old jeans and hemp. Of course,
not much arch support though apparently right it's sort of
like a moccasin. I would imagine you can eat your
weeds in your yard if you're into that. Um, A
(24:26):
lot of edible weeds like garlic, mustard or chickweed. Yeah,
I mean, like, what's a weed? But some plant that
we decided we didn't want. Yeah. I read something somewhere
about the human diet. How um, it's become so narrow.
We used to eat a lot more stuff that, a
lot more weeds, um, and as a result, our health
(24:47):
was a lot better. Yeah. The bitter, I think we
talked about it before. Have you Have you gotten to
the point to where everything we talked about rings a bell?
Like we've mentioned everything before you, I have a world
is getting narrower. But um, I feel like we've talked
about before. The bitter the plant, the healthier it it
(25:07):
tends to be. And I think you said also bitterness
though also um suggests that it's poisonous too. Well, that
is part of the edibility test and You shouldn't just
go in your yard and just pull a bunch of
weeds and eat them. Not everything is edible. Dying is
not that great. Oh but if you do have edible
weeds and you want to add them as in your
(25:28):
salads or something, that's that's something that some people do.
Some people. Some people use old license plates to side
their houses. Is that true? It's in this article, of
course it's true. I bet you, I bet you. That's
the thing. I could see that, and you know what,
why not, that's they're just going to waste, you know,
(25:49):
all license plates. We got a birdhouse made out of
license plates. Oh, those are cute. That's all right. We
got it because it was all right Ohio, California and Georgia,
which was Emily's first eights, which is kind of weird. Triumpt.
I gotta have this. Do you use it for bb
gun practice? No, that's just birds. Um. You know. I
(26:09):
shot an animal once in my life and it was
one of the worst things that ever happened to me.
I was too young, I gotta be begun, and I
was tired of shooting cans, so I shot a squirrel
and it haunts me to this day. And I'm not
pooping hunters. If you're into that, that's fine. I'm just
not into it. So I shot a squirrel when I
was twelve, You're a haunted I want to come clean.
(26:31):
Yeah all right, So what's this poop burger thing? I
couldn't find any any corroborating evidence, but basically, there was
a a story that popped up on a couple of
blogs about a Japanese scientist who have basically converted human
feces into an edible burger. And the two blog posts
I saw, we're basically piggybacking off of each other, and
(26:53):
the original source would lead to a four or four era,
So I think it's I think the American press accidentally
picked up a yes Man article or something like that.
You know, well, how about if if anyone can corroborate corroborate.
I had the worst time with that word. Can corroborate? Yeah,
(27:13):
I can't never say the word right, corroborate, corober rate,
corrobor rate, corrobor rate. There you go. Can we put
a ding ding ding in their press production? So if
anyone can let us know that this story is true,
then uh yeah, yeah, I'd love to know that. Yeah,
let us know there are speaking of fecal material though. Chuck.
(27:34):
There there was also this green movement to give up
toilet paper. Oh I heard about that. Do you remember
that huge ball in Uh that was the size of
a school bus that was made of um like handy
wipes and fat in London. I don't remember that. It
was this fatty deposit made up of grease and used
(27:55):
handy white. Is it like an art project? No, it
was trapped in the London sewer system. Okay, I thought
display or something. No, God, no, no, I don't remember that.
That's it was. It was within the last year. Um. Well, anyway,
I guess some people are taking this even further and saying,
not even toilet paper will touch my bottom. Instead, I'm
(28:16):
going to use um basically diapers. Oh, just like cloth squares.
So you keep a pail of clean ones on one
side and a dirty pail on the other, and then
you just wash the poopy ones and you're green. Huh.
I don't think I will go that far. I don't think,
(28:38):
but I am interested in a in a bid day
because I do think toilet paper is disgusting, like taking dry,
thin paper and wiping poop from your skin. It I
don't get it, and it's never made sense to me really,
even as a child. Well no, since I got grown
enough to realize that moisture is a pretty nice thing
to happen if you're cleaning poop. I just put a
(29:00):
little vasseline in there, so a bid day, I'd be
into a bid day, okay, And I'm exclusively with the
wet wipes. Well, you're contributing to the huge fat deposit
ball and what it was made up? Even those that
say they're fleshable, it's it's probably a bunch of bunk.
The London thing proves it. It's bunk. And for some reason,
(29:22):
I don't remember why, but like it was almost exclusively
wet wipes and fat grease, like they were attracted to
one another or something like that. Maybe, So I don't
understand it all right. Do you think they'd be like
a squirrel or the remnants of a squirrel right in
there something? But no, it's just wet wipes and grease.
(29:46):
Holy cal well, I got let's get this one back
on the rails and finish it up. Huh. I don't
have anything else? You did you see the Albert Einstein refrigerator.
Oh that's like no electricity whatsoever. That makes sense. Well,
it does need a hours of heat. Um. But I
think Einstein and one of his former students developed a
(30:06):
refrigerator that has no moving parts. Requires it could be
run on solar energy, but basically it uses um. You know,
when you lower the pressure and the atmosphere pressure of something,
it's boiling temperature as well. Uh. And then when you
boil something, it sucks energy out of the surrounding atmosphere
and lowers the temperature. That's basically this kind of Rube
(30:29):
Goldberg esque Einstein invention that this guy in Oxford was
trying to rebuild. He made a test pilot version of it,
but it's like not very efficient. I think that's a
new not a new thing, but a lot I've seen
a lot of stuff lately about people remaking like some
early inventions that were never able to be properly made. Yeah,
(30:50):
I think you were talking about that, like Da Vinci
stuff that. Yeah, there's a TV show where they definitely
did the Da Vinci stuff, but those were mainly like
pens and things. But I did see a video the
other day someone made a Da Vinci a musical instrument
that Da Vinci invented that was never properly made, and
it was look like a played like a piano, but
(31:11):
it sounded like strings and it was it was really
kind of awesome. So that's a long way of saying,
build this fridge behind the Einstein fridge. Well, there's other
things you can do too. If you have a fridge
and you don't feel like giving up your fridge. If
you have a fridge that's older than two thousand, yeah,
and you have a little bit of dope, go buy
an energy star rated one. Yeah. Throw that other one
(31:32):
in the landfill, right. Um, No use it as like
a planter or something out in your backyard to grow
food in. Yeah. You can always sell a fridge. Yeah,
like any appliance that works, you can sell to somebody.
You just want to take the door off to make
sure no little kids get trapped in it or Indiana
Jones's right. Um. You also, if you do have an
energy star rated fridge, you want to clean the coils
(31:55):
off once a year. That will keep it running efficiently,
right exactly. Um, you want to think about what you're
going to open the fridge to get, so you don't
just stand there with the fridge open like a slack
jawed yokel like everybody does. And then apparently if you
keep your fridge fairly stocked um, that will allow it
to um the temperature to to bounce back to where
(32:17):
it needs to be. It has less um atmosphere. Cool
my fridge. You have to open to get the water,
filtered water, which really bugs me. It's not like in
the outside of the door. I've never seen that. Yeah,
you just live in a cuckoo house. You've got cauliflower.
You got to open the door to get the water.
(32:38):
That cilantro sitting and cups all over the house. That's
a good idea. I've tried that, but put it in
the fridge and it just wrecks it. So I guess
maybe just leaving it out. I mean, it would lasts
for quite a while. Man, I love that stuff. Don't
you feel bad for people who taste dish soap when
they eat cilantro? Yeah? I love cilantro too, Mandy. Well,
let's it about cilantro. It's you want to learn more
(33:00):
about it. You can type the word into the search
part how stuff works, and you can also type in
can I go without a refrigerator in the search barneill
bring this article up. Uh, And since I said search bar,
that means it's time for the listener mayor Yeah, I'm
gonna call this from one of our law enforcement officers. Hey, guys,
(33:22):
my name is Andy M a police officer for a
law enforcement agency in St. Louis, Missouri area. Go Cardinals.
I'm a big fan of the show and appreciate the
always new, interesting topics and discussions. And I've noticed that
you seem to have an affinity for law enforcement related topics,
which is true. You definitely do you love them. I
(33:42):
would just listen. I think I wanted to be a
cop or something. Maybe you've been a security card that's
not the same. I was just listening to the meth
podcast and notice that you mentioned one of the first
shake and bake incidences, and that's a mobile meth lab.
Apparently that's like the couple and go, which occurred actually
in my precinct at a Walmart. Remember we talked about that.
(34:04):
Um I was not yet employed there, but I know
one of the officers, uh. I know the officer that
responded what I understand, a woman was shop lifting was
in custody of the loss prevention officers when they called
for police assistance. My now coworker arrested her and in
the process discovered a gatorade bottle in her purse, which
is being used as a mobile meth lab. That's so crazy.
(34:24):
It is very crazy. Math usage in the area that
I work in is rampant, and only having been on
the force lesson a year, I've already handled two meth
labs of my own. Having seen firsthand some of the
reactions to meth that these folks have, I will say
that you were pretty much right on, guys. Additionally, another
unfortunate situation is that, uh, where there is a meth lab,
(34:45):
typically there are children. One of my meth labs was
also home to seven kids. It's a really sad sight
to see. You remember that one episode of Breaking Bad,
which one the one where Pinkman basically gets kidnapped by
those methodics who robbed t m Machine, And typically you
will find that the parents have little interest in their
children and pay them very little attention in general. Well,
(35:07):
of course, because they're all interested in using math. It's
kind of a one track mind situation. So it makes
you appreciate non Matthews versus what Andy says. So thanks
Andy officer. You know you wrap that up at the
end and expanked it on the bottom. He had he
had another part, So that might have read awkward A
(35:27):
suggestion which I can cut out, but I may. I
took the suggestion, but I just didn't read it. Is
it a mystery suggestion? Then? Um? Yeah, maybe I'm surprise you. Well,
if you want to send us a mystery suggestion, we
are welcome to those. You can tweet to us at
s y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slafe Stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
(35:50):
and you can hang out with us at our nice
little warm home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
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(36:15):
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Welcome to you stuff you should know from how stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,
and she's eating stalks of broccoli. Yes, not the florette's
(00:21):
eating chunky trunk. She throws the floretts away. It's bizarre. No,
she's not into food waste, so she's eating every single bit.
She's just munching on it like a rabbit over there. Oh,
I see you know. Oh no that I look more
close to see that. You're right. That wasn't just a
clever lead into what will be a great intro from you. No,
that was the intro. Okay, Jerry doesn't waste food, people, No,
(00:43):
food waste is a terrible thing. And we're we're that's
that's only part of the tip of the iceberg of
this subject that we're about to touch on the tip
of the ice box. This is a huge, rambling, enormous
topic that we're about to tackle. See, Chuck, you've heard
of green eco friendliness. Yeah, yeah, we like eco consciousness.
(01:05):
You'd like to push that racket when we can. Yeah,
what said is like more and more today it seems
to be. Well, there's parts that have becoming green, like
people recycle, and like recycling is the thing now, it's
not going anywhere. Like if you don't recycle, now you're
kind of like one of those people that throws cigarettes
out the window. Yeah, that's pretty bad too. You know
a lot of people still do that. Yeah, but I
(01:27):
think not to get off on my high horse, but
I think a lot of the people that toss the
cigarettes out the window probably like would say, if someone
through a McDonald's back out the window, they'd be like,
how can you do that? Yeah, Like they justify cigarettes somehow.
I've seen that people throw those things out, like eco
friendly people. I think, just the eco friendly smokers, I
think justify that because it's like, wow, you still want
(01:49):
a cigarette in your car, you rite, dude, because they
stink there will end up in a in a lake
or something. A birdle eat it. Did you know that?
I was at the Guess station the other day and
I saw a guy driving off and as he drove off,
he held his hand out the window and released a
stack of apparently losing lottery tickets a stay. I'm talking
(02:12):
like thirty just right into the parking lot. I couldn't
believe my eyes. I mean it's a joke now literally
on Anchorman in the original anchor Man, when they finish
all of their McDonald's, they just throw all their stuff,
like in the park and the Madman had one of
those two they have like a family picnic, and afterward
they gathered up their stuff and just like picked up
(02:32):
the mincot and throw all the trash out, and we're like,
let's go right exactly That's how it used to be, though. Yeah,
isn't that weird that that used to be a thing
that it's okay to throw trash on the ground, and
it's it's not okay, but some people still do it.
I've seen it, right, Um. But the point is, I
am making a point here. Believe it or not, there
is some parts of the green movement that have become entrenched,
(02:56):
ensconced in the mainstream culture, and it's having an act,
it's having a real factor. It's not even enough of
an effect. We're all headed for global catastrophe eventually. Um.
But when we when we think about the green movement now,
it almost seems past tense like it was. There's parts
of it that seemed like a bit of a fad,
(03:17):
you know what I mean, like being green? How green
can you go? Like what can you do? And uh,
there was this thing that kind of popped up in
two thousand nine because of a New York Times article, um,
where people were starting to give up the refrigerators as
part of the green movement to be green to basically
(03:39):
like say I'm greener than now. You get the impression
that that's what they're doing. Ultimately, they're saying, no, it's
just one last thing that's using up um electricity, so
it's saving CEO two emissions. But it seems to me
to fall along the line of the people who like
had themselves sterilized so they couldn't contribute to the growing population,
(04:01):
global population. You're saying, those are about the same, it
seems to me, although the the refrigerator one is far
more reversible because you just go and buy a refrigerator
and plug it in. Yeah, bam, I'm back baby. Well
you can reverse your your procedure to not have kids
(04:21):
to these days. Yeah, I think it's kind of it's
a roll of the dice. Oh really was if it'll
work again? Oh? I thought you could get it reversion
up in the sweat. They can, you know, reverse it,
but it doesn't necessarily work. Okay, I thought that's pretty good.
All right, man, that was a sidebar. Uh So should
(04:42):
we talk about food waste? Well, let's talk about this
refrigerator thing. You're really fixated on the food waste thing,
aren't you. Well it's a big part of whether or
not you can go without a fridge. Well, let's let's
talk about what happens or why people go without a fridge. First,
Chuck could feel bear with me. So people are pulling
the plugs on these refrigers? Are they wearing two thousand
nine or at least three people were in two thousand
(05:02):
nine one in Canada? I think yeah? Um, And but
I get the impression from reading the original New York
Times article that there were there were. It was this
kind of the sub thing among the green It wasn't
all the rage, No, like bamboo flooring a cork flooring. No.
And the New York Times article pointed out that it
(05:23):
seems to be a dividing line among green the eco
conscious in the eco crazy. Yeah, like what where some
people say that's preposterous, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
and then other people were like, look at how far
I'm willing to go to be green. So what's the
what's the benefit of all that? Well, a refrigerator uses electricity,
(05:45):
and I guess we can give you a couple of
stats to bring it all home for you. Typical fridge
post two thousand uses about four fifty k watts per year. Yeah,
that's thanks to the Energy Star ratings. Yeah, which is
better than it used to be for sure. Um. And
if you want to translate that into uh, cheeseburgers, no
way into miles driven in your car, because we're talking
(06:10):
about the emission of CEO two. Uh, that's about eight
hundred miles driving a car, about eight hundred miles depending
on what kind of mile do you get, because really
it's a gallons of gas. Uh. Yeah. So even then
the article they point out that it's kind of low
on the list. It ranks behind closed dryer, central air
(06:33):
in your furnace. Yeah, your furnace is like six thousand
kilowats a year. It's amazing. So you're you're a refrigerator.
UM's four d and fifty kilowat hours of electricity per year.
So it's not even super high up in your household. No,
it's nowhere near. But I think the people who are
pulling the plugs on these refrigerators are saying every little
bit counts. Yeah, and they probably have already taken other
(06:57):
green precautions, like they probably don't run their furnace like this,
you know, like they might have a pot belly stuff.
They better not if they use a normal old like yeah,
terrible electric furnace. They then I'm going to go to
their house and have a little chance like shaking outside
their house. Yet they're eating out of a glucooler, right,
(07:19):
and that's what they do. I mean, like when when
when you pull the plug on the fridge, I wish
I could just come up with another phrase that rolls
off the tongue. So I'm tired of saying that when
you go without a refrigerator, dee fridge, deefridge chuck nice.
When you de fridge um, you still need typically some
(07:39):
source of cooling inside of your home, something that can
keep some food items from perishing, because we apparently refrigerate
a lot of stuff we don't need to. That is true. Yeah,
you can keep that catch up the mustard out on
the counter, hot sauce. I've read it goes three years
in a regular pantry. Chi just keep it out there. Yeah,
(08:01):
we kept growing up, kept a lot of stuff out
of the fridge, and not for any reason other than
that's just how it was in my house. Like I
remember butter like in a tray on the counter. Butter
is better that way. Room tip. Oh man, are you
kidding me? Yeah, just like it's already it's so spread herble.
I keep mine in the fridge just to keep it
longer because I don't need that much butter. But man,
(08:23):
if you go to a restaurant and they give you
butter and it's cold, just like, what do you do?
It's literally Emily's biggest pet peeve is well, I agree
with cold rolls with cold butter or hot rolls with
cold Yeah, because you get the hot rolls, you think
this place knows what they're doing, and you get this
cold pad of butter. So I've developed a technique, Um,
(08:45):
you know, the under the arm pit method. But well
it's close. It's it's you just cut your hands and
you put a couple of those little foil wrap you
want to make sure it's wrapped in foil pats. Of
cold butter and you heat them up pretty quick. And
I'll tell you what, you make some friends around the
table if you eat somebody's butter up for him because
nobody likes cold button. Then you hand them a little
butter pat and you're like, here, take this, it's my
(09:07):
gift to you. I like it when they just have
a little olive oil and balstomac vinegar. You know that's
good too. But I like good room temperature butter, especially
like milk fat content or more good. Um. So, like
I said, I like butter out we left um remember
certain condiments being left out? What about fruits and vegetables? Um? Yeah,
(09:29):
like a lot of vegetables. I don't refrigerate now, like
I never refrigerate peppers and onions, and well you don't
want to. If you do refrigerate an onion, it will
last longer. But if you're going to use it eat,
you want to take it out of your refrigerator and
bring it up to room temperature before you cook with
it or use it in food, because it takes a
lot of the temperature white. But that's also a tip
(09:51):
if you hate crying. Um, because if you cut a
cold onion, the enzyme that eventually sets off the chain
reaction that makes you cry is contained. It's not as volatile.
I've noticed that. So that's your your tip from Chuck
and Josh my eyes killed me too. With onions, it
(10:12):
depends only and it's not just like oh it's little tears.
It's like massive burning. It's really bad. Really Yeah, yeah,
you should super sensitive. I did it. Don't be dumb
on it. That explains exactly what's going on with you.
I've seen that, Okay, so you know, um so yeah,
a lot of the vegetables I don't keep like it
depends on when I'm gonna eat it. If I bring
home some like a big head of cauliflower, I'll keep
(10:34):
that out in the fruit basket for a couple of days.
I've never seen that before in my entire life. Cauliflower out.
I've only seen it in like a crisper drawer. Yeah,
I've left cauliflower and broccoli out like green onions and
can lemongrass, garlic. Of course, potatoes don't refrigerate. I think
(10:56):
I would like stop short and point if I saw
like cauliflower out and like the root pads, be like,
what is that? That's just fine. I haven't even been
to your house. I didn't notice that. Well, I mean
I don't always have, had you gone through the col yeah,
just eating it. Um. Tomatoes are another one too, there
they'll last longer in the fridge if you're gonna cook
with them. You want to bring up to your room temperature.
(11:16):
Some stuff you just don't want to refrigerate. Potatoes, apparently
you don't do very well in the fridge. You put
them in a nice brown paper sack in your pantry
away from the sunlight. They keep for a really long time. Yeah,
you know, Jerry, I think Jerry showed me the little
trick was that you with the cilantro Jerry and the yep,
Oh what I need to notice because they eat a
lot of cilantro. You the cilantro you don't use just
(11:38):
fill up a glass like half full of water and
just throw it in there and just leave it in
your out in your kitchen. Oh like the base of
it in the water and just stays fresh like super long.
And you know, the fridge can beat up cilantro after
like a day or two. I like your optimism, by
the way, thank you. Um. The avocado is what always
kills me though, I well, I I eat a lot
(12:00):
of avocado as well. It's hard to keep those fresh.
Tried a lot of tricks too. Well, here's here's your trick.
You're ready, okay, Oh you're cutting up an avocado and like, yeah,
that's it for the avocado. I have no trick for that. Well,
what do you eat the whole? Yeah, pretty much. I
don't understand what. Well, I don't know. I don't like
eat the skin and everything. No, that's not what I mean.
(12:22):
It's like once I couldn't do an avocado, all of
that avocado is about to be consumed by me. So
that's the tip. Yeah, But I do have another tip
for you though, with avocados. You know how you go
to the store and you like squeeze them, and you
you you can find one out of a hundred and
fifty that's squeeze a bowls. Pretty annoying, it is, But
that squeezed one is gonna be nasty and bruised and
(12:44):
just disgusting. There's gonna be basically like rot wherever you
and everybody else squeeze that avocado. So you can have
a lot less useable avocado. So you want to get
one that you can't squeeze. It's so firm it can't
be squeezed well. But then you just have to wait
a few days to eat it. You can wait one day,
it's all it takes, my friend. And here's how. You
take a brown paper bag and buy a banana, and
(13:07):
you put the banana and the avocados in the brown
paper bag. Roll it up pretty tight, but leave a
little space in there. And they do it, and the
game right, they get it on. Uh, and what happens
is the avocados ripening. Really Yeah. The the banana as
it ripens, well, it puts off a gas um that
(13:27):
ripens the avocados. I'm gonna try that, and I'm not kidding.
Twelve to twenty four hours, you have totally ready avocados. Yeah,
because I like my avocados firm still. Oh, you're gonna
love this chuck and not mushy but not not hard,
but just firm. You're gonna thank me later. I'm excited
about your avocado experiences now. So there's plenty of stuff
(13:49):
that doesn't need refrigerating, So that's one way that people
can defridge. Yeah, this is turning into like food. One
on one with Josh and chuck. Yeah, I hope that's okay.
Um yeah, plenty of stuff that you don't have to refrigerate. Um,
but people still use some sort of cooling mechanism. Yeah,
like a cooler, Like if you have meats or dairy products. Um,
(14:12):
if you want to go without a fridge, most people
use a cooler. And the thing that annoy me with
this article, as they said, or they use a mini
freezer to make ice. I'm like, well, that's probably just
about as bad as you're stupid fridge. Well, it's pretty close.
So like one of those little chest freezers. Um, I
didn't see the size of it. Oh, a six point
four cubic feet chest freezer, which isn't big, but it's
(14:33):
not that small. Um. But apparently that's the that's the
thing that people who defridge use. That still uses two
kilowatt hours a year. So really, by unplugging your refrigerator
and using iNeST freezer, you're saving about fifteen gallons of
gas a year. Yeah. I don't know if that's your best, Like,
(14:54):
spend your time doing better things for the environment. I think,
Well again, I think people who do this are saying
I'll do this on top of stuff and then kind
of cleverly, if you ask me, they're using this the
ice chests to um, we'll basically fill up like a
two lead bottle of water which they didn't allow to
go to waste, the two leader bottle um, putting those
(15:15):
in the freezer chest, and then having like a separate
cooler that they put the frozen water bottles in to
keep cool their milk and their meats and stuff like that.
Uh yeah, and you know what, we're gonna talk about
some tips for shopping to accommodate in this lifestyle. But
first let's take a little message, right Okay, all right,
(15:40):
so you're talking about the cooler full of frozen bottles
of water to keep like your milk in some of
your dairy and stuff. But if you when you go
to the store, if you're gonna try and live this way,
you can't probably buy the gallons of milk unless you
really go through a lot of milk. You might want
to buy quartz of milk. You can't go to Sam's
Club and buy eight gallons of mayonnaise unless you eat
(16:03):
that pretty quickly. And if you should focus more attention
on your mayonnaise habits, then what you're doing for the environment,
So you're gonna have to buy smaller amounts of things,
which they say can cost a little more. But well, yeah,
if you're not wasting food though, Like if you added
up the food you waste, you're probably burning a lot
of money and there's just gonna be far less food
waste if you're buying in smaller amounts. Right. The other
(16:25):
the other side of that though is um if you're
you know, eco friendly or eco conscious, um, you're one
of the things that you're probably trying to avoid is
packaging as well. And if you buy a smaller amounts
of food, that means you buy more packages. Think about that.
And if you have smaller amounts of food, that means
you have to go to the store more often, and
(16:45):
then you may have to drive more often, which doesn't
matter if you're riding a bike or something like that,
but if you're driving a car, then you're burning those
gallons of gas that you might necessarily not have been anyway. Yeah,
you like you get in your old seventy to pick
up truck and drive the twelve miles to get like
a pint of Mannames, you have to stop and fill
(17:06):
up at least once during that. Uh. So, can we
talk a little bit about food waste though, Yeah, because
it's a it's a pretty big thing, Like if you
have no refrigerator, the chances of your food spoiling just
simply increase if you have no refrigerator. Well not so apparently,
(17:27):
according to a report, unless developed countries they have no refrigerators,
they experience less food spoilers. Bam, you just faced me,
because they're like, they're eating what they need. You know,
they're not going to Sam's Club and buying seven hundred
chicken McNuggets to put in the freezer. I hear that.
And I guess if somebody who defridges uses the developing
(17:50):
world as a model for their food consumption. Yeah, I
wonder what hang ups there are though that would keep
you from successfully doing that, or if it is just
entirely possible to just watch how you're eating enough so
you don't have very much food waste. Let's talk food
waste finally. Uh in developing countries, post harvest losses of
(18:12):
food grains can reach his high dude, in developing countries
and that a sad statistic. Yeah, because one of the
things that makes that so sad, Chuck is that that
food has been harvested and is ready to go. So
not only is it ready to go, it just doesn't
(18:33):
make it to somebody's stomach. Um, all of the energy
used to produce, harvest, and transport that food has already
been used as well. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
So that's a huge waste there too. It's not just
food waste. You add a double bummer onto every bummer
that I express. I'm good at it. The US spends
(18:54):
about a billion dollars a year to dispose of food
waste in this country, a billion dollars a year, and
the e p A says that food leftovers are the
single largest part of our waste stream by weight. Right,
They make up about twelve percent of municipal landfills, which
are a pretty awful word in and of themselves, because
municipal landfills are um responsible for about thirty four of
(19:19):
methane emissions globally, or at least in the US, and
methane is twenty one times more damaging as a greenhouse
gas than CEO two. Yeah, and all that food waste
is producing like tons of methane. Yeah, which is I
don't understand why we're not trapping that methane and burning
it off as energy. I know there are some pilot projects,
(19:39):
but I don't understand why it's not a bigger thing. Now. Yeah,
didn't we study something about calparts? Yeah, I saw that.
I seem that rings a bell from the past. Yeah.
Livestock is a huge contributor to methane emissions. Um, and
nobody knows what to do about it. But there were
plans to kind of try to trap it and burn
it for electricity. I think it was a farmer who
(20:01):
was doing he was using cow poop or something. I
think that Dirty Jobs episode did something like that. I
definitely remember looking at that. Um. But I agree, methane,
let's trap it. Hey there's a T shirt. So yeah.
So food waste is a I thought it was the
potential was increased without a refrigerator. You've opened my eyes here. Um.
(20:23):
But another those those double bummers that I did, add
the more packaging and more trips to the store. Um. Again,
if you have a if you lived near a store,
you can bike too or something like that. Um that
gets around that. And then also if you are one
of those zero waste people, like have you heard of
B Johnson? Yeah, she's pretty remarkable. What's her website? Uh?
(20:47):
It is Zero Waste Home. Yeah, she's one of these
people that is doing like the family experiment, like let's
see what we can really do and putting it, putting
it on a blog. She um. I think her family
is the one that has produced a court of waste
in a year, a court of trash in a in
(21:08):
a year. Everything else is reused. She has five rs.
You think your three rs are worthwhile? Reduce, reuse, recycle,
what or her other to refuse? So she's saying that
even if it's free, you know that free frisbee the
chiropractor gives you, say you don't want it? I do
that a lot. Actually, I don't want a lot of
that junk. Okay. So you're in line with this reduce,
(21:29):
which would be you know, say, using your own, um,
your own grocery bags. Oh sure, yeah, so you're reducing
the use of the store's grocery bags. Reuse. So don't
throw your own grocery bag away right, use it again? Uh? Recycle, Yes,
you've heard of this one. And then rot chuck rot
(21:53):
like rotten h If you're not gonna do this, I
think So that's the last one. That's you mean by rot,
I'm sure composted. Yeah, And like you said about the
people that like I want to go without a fridge,
but I'm gonna go to the grocery store every ten
minutes to get a packet of mayonnaise. I don't think
that's the case. Like, I bet a lot of those
people are growing food uh in their gardens and sharecome
(22:15):
posting and like probably not doing that. And Plus also
she points out b Johnson points out that, um, a
lot of the stuff that we would consider food waste,
like you know, grocery stores, food waste to me is
a I think we should do a whole podcast on it.
It is fascinating, mind boggling the amount of waste we produce,
food waste. I've read that something like a third a
(22:39):
third of all of the food in the world goes
to waste one way or another, either like in the
developing world, doesn't make it after being prasted. UM, food
waste from the United States. In the grocery stores in
the US, there's any kind of cosmetic imperfection, if it's
not pretty enough, they just throw it away. There's nothing
wrong with it, but it'll just get tossed. Yeah, that's
(23:01):
I don't think I would like to know what goes
on behind the scenes of like a huge grocery chain.
I think we need to get to the bottom of
it an expose perhaps, But but b. Johnson points out, UM,
a lot of this stuff that even people at home
would consider wasted spoiled food, UM, can be reused. So
like if you have a bunch of stale bread, make
bread pudding. Um, if you have some will to lettuce,
(23:23):
drop it in an ice bath and it wakes back
up still bread to the birds. That's nice, Like when
I have moldy bread and always just like go out
and throw it and then do you eat the birds afterwards?
Are you like raising them? Yeah? I get my baby gun.
Don't even need because you just teach them to eat
(23:43):
out of your hand and then grab them, snap the
little neck, and you got brown thrasher for dinner. That's
our state bird. We get in trouble for that, would we? Yeah,
you can't kill your state bird. I figured it was
the state bird because it was the tastiest bird. I
don't think so. So you dug this up. This is
pretty interesting, UM, if you want to talk about people
(24:05):
really go in the extra mile to not have a
carbon footprint. Some folks are making on their own shoes
out of old tires and old jeans and hemp. Of course,
not much arch support though apparently right it's sort of
like a moccasin. I would imagine you can eat your
weeds in your yard if you're into that. Um, A
(24:26):
lot of edible weeds like garlic, mustard or chickweed. Yeah,
I mean, like, what's a weed? But some plant that
we decided we didn't want. Yeah. I read something somewhere
about the human diet. How um, it's become so narrow.
We used to eat a lot more stuff that, a
lot more weeds, um, and as a result, our health
(24:47):
was a lot better. Yeah. The bitter, I think we
talked about it before. Have you Have you gotten to
the point to where everything we talked about rings a bell?
Like we've mentioned everything before you, I have a world
is getting narrower. But um, I feel like we've talked
about before. The bitter the plant, the healthier it it
(25:07):
tends to be. And I think you said also bitterness
though also um suggests that it's poisonous too. Well, that
is part of the edibility test and You shouldn't just
go in your yard and just pull a bunch of
weeds and eat them. Not everything is edible. Dying is
not that great. Oh but if you do have edible
weeds and you want to add them as in your
(25:28):
salads or something, that's that's something that some people do.
Some people. Some people use old license plates to side
their houses. Is that true? It's in this article, of
course it's true. I bet you, I bet you. That's
the thing. I could see that, and you know what,
why not, that's they're just going to waste, you know,
(25:49):
all license plates. We got a birdhouse made out of
license plates. Oh, those are cute. That's all right. We
got it because it was all right Ohio, California and Georgia,
which was Emily's first eights, which is kind of weird. Triumpt.
I gotta have this. Do you use it for bb
gun practice? No, that's just birds. Um. You know. I
(26:09):
shot an animal once in my life and it was
one of the worst things that ever happened to me.
I was too young, I gotta be begun, and I
was tired of shooting cans, so I shot a squirrel
and it haunts me to this day. And I'm not
pooping hunters. If you're into that, that's fine. I'm just
not into it. So I shot a squirrel when I
was twelve, You're a haunted I want to come clean.
(26:31):
Yeah all right, So what's this poop burger thing? I
couldn't find any any corroborating evidence, but basically, there was
a a story that popped up on a couple of
blogs about a Japanese scientist who have basically converted human
feces into an edible burger. And the two blog posts
I saw, we're basically piggybacking off of each other, and
(26:53):
the original source would lead to a four or four era,
So I think it's I think the American press accidentally
picked up a yes Man article or something like that.
You know, well, how about if if anyone can corroborate corroborate.
I had the worst time with that word. Can corroborate? Yeah,
(27:13):
I can't never say the word right, corroborate, corober rate,
corrobor rate, corrobor rate. There you go. Can we put
a ding ding ding in their press production? So if
anyone can let us know that this story is true,
then uh yeah, yeah, I'd love to know that. Yeah,
let us know there are speaking of fecal material though. Chuck.
(27:34):
There there was also this green movement to give up
toilet paper. Oh I heard about that. Do you remember
that huge ball in Uh that was the size of
a school bus that was made of um like handy
wipes and fat in London. I don't remember that. It
was this fatty deposit made up of grease and used
(27:55):
handy white. Is it like an art project? No, it
was trapped in the London sewer system. Okay, I thought
display or something. No, God, no, no, I don't remember that.
That's it was. It was within the last year. Um. Well, anyway,
I guess some people are taking this even further and saying,
not even toilet paper will touch my bottom. Instead, I'm
(28:16):
going to use um basically diapers. Oh, just like cloth squares.
So you keep a pail of clean ones on one
side and a dirty pail on the other, and then
you just wash the poopy ones and you're green. Huh.
I don't think I will go that far. I don't think,
(28:38):
but I am interested in a in a bid day
because I do think toilet paper is disgusting, like taking dry,
thin paper and wiping poop from your skin. It I
don't get it, and it's never made sense to me really,
even as a child. Well no, since I got grown
enough to realize that moisture is a pretty nice thing
to happen if you're cleaning poop. I just put a
(29:00):
little vasseline in there, so a bid day, I'd be
into a bid day, okay, And I'm exclusively with the
wet wipes. Well, you're contributing to the huge fat deposit
ball and what it was made up? Even those that
say they're fleshable, it's it's probably a bunch of bunk.
The London thing proves it. It's bunk. And for some reason,
(29:22):
I don't remember why, but like it was almost exclusively
wet wipes and fat grease, like they were attracted to
one another or something like that. Maybe, So I don't
understand it all right. Do you think they'd be like
a squirrel or the remnants of a squirrel right in
there something? But no, it's just wet wipes and grease.
(29:46):
Holy cal well, I got let's get this one back
on the rails and finish it up. Huh. I don't
have anything else? You did you see the Albert Einstein refrigerator.
Oh that's like no electricity whatsoever. That makes sense. Well,
it does need a hours of heat. Um. But I
think Einstein and one of his former students developed a
(30:06):
refrigerator that has no moving parts. Requires it could be
run on solar energy, but basically it uses um. You know,
when you lower the pressure and the atmosphere pressure of something,
it's boiling temperature as well. Uh. And then when you
boil something, it sucks energy out of the surrounding atmosphere
and lowers the temperature. That's basically this kind of Rube
(30:29):
Goldberg esque Einstein invention that this guy in Oxford was
trying to rebuild. He made a test pilot version of it,
but it's like not very efficient. I think that's a
new not a new thing, but a lot I've seen
a lot of stuff lately about people remaking like some
early inventions that were never able to be properly made. Yeah,
(30:50):
I think you were talking about that, like Da Vinci
stuff that. Yeah, there's a TV show where they definitely
did the Da Vinci stuff, but those were mainly like
pens and things. But I did see a video the
other day someone made a Da Vinci a musical instrument
that Da Vinci invented that was never properly made, and
it was look like a played like a piano, but
(31:11):
it sounded like strings and it was it was really
kind of awesome. So that's a long way of saying,
build this fridge behind the Einstein fridge. Well, there's other
things you can do too. If you have a fridge
and you don't feel like giving up your fridge. If
you have a fridge that's older than two thousand, yeah,
and you have a little bit of dope, go buy
an energy star rated one. Yeah. Throw that other one
(31:32):
in the landfill, right. Um, No use it as like
a planter or something out in your backyard to grow
food in. Yeah. You can always sell a fridge. Yeah,
like any appliance that works, you can sell to somebody.
You just want to take the door off to make
sure no little kids get trapped in it or Indiana
Jones's right. Um. You also, if you do have an
energy star rated fridge, you want to clean the coils
(31:55):
off once a year. That will keep it running efficiently,
right exactly. Um, you want to think about what you're
going to open the fridge to get, so you don't
just stand there with the fridge open like a slack
jawed yokel like everybody does. And then apparently if you
keep your fridge fairly stocked um, that will allow it
to um the temperature to to bounce back to where
(32:17):
it needs to be. It has less um atmosphere. Cool
my fridge. You have to open to get the water,
filtered water, which really bugs me. It's not like in
the outside of the door. I've never seen that. Yeah,
you just live in a cuckoo house. You've got cauliflower.
You got to open the door to get the water.
(32:38):
That cilantro sitting and cups all over the house. That's
a good idea. I've tried that, but put it in
the fridge and it just wrecks it. So I guess
maybe just leaving it out. I mean, it would lasts
for quite a while. Man, I love that stuff. Don't
you feel bad for people who taste dish soap when
they eat cilantro? Yeah? I love cilantro too, Mandy. Well,
let's it about cilantro. It's you want to learn more
(33:00):
about it. You can type the word into the search
part how stuff works, and you can also type in
can I go without a refrigerator in the search barneill
bring this article up. Uh, And since I said search bar,
that means it's time for the listener mayor Yeah, I'm
gonna call this from one of our law enforcement officers. Hey, guys,
(33:22):
my name is Andy M a police officer for a
law enforcement agency in St. Louis, Missouri area. Go Cardinals.
I'm a big fan of the show and appreciate the
always new, interesting topics and discussions. And I've noticed that
you seem to have an affinity for law enforcement related topics,
which is true. You definitely do you love them. I
(33:42):
would just listen. I think I wanted to be a
cop or something. Maybe you've been a security card that's
not the same. I was just listening to the meth
podcast and notice that you mentioned one of the first
shake and bake incidences, and that's a mobile meth lab.
Apparently that's like the couple and go, which occurred actually
in my precinct at a Walmart. Remember we talked about that.
(34:04):
Um I was not yet employed there, but I know
one of the officers, uh. I know the officer that
responded what I understand, a woman was shop lifting was
in custody of the loss prevention officers when they called
for police assistance. My now coworker arrested her and in
the process discovered a gatorade bottle in her purse, which
is being used as a mobile meth lab. That's so crazy.
(34:24):
It is very crazy. Math usage in the area that
I work in is rampant, and only having been on
the force lesson a year, I've already handled two meth
labs of my own. Having seen firsthand some of the
reactions to meth that these folks have, I will say
that you were pretty much right on, guys. Additionally, another
unfortunate situation is that, uh, where there is a meth lab,
(34:45):
typically there are children. One of my meth labs was
also home to seven kids. It's a really sad sight
to see. You remember that one episode of Breaking Bad,
which one the one where Pinkman basically gets kidnapped by
those methodics who robbed t m Machine, And typically you
will find that the parents have little interest in their
children and pay them very little attention in general. Well,
(35:07):
of course, because they're all interested in using math. It's
kind of a one track mind situation. So it makes
you appreciate non Matthews versus what Andy says. So thanks
Andy officer. You know you wrap that up at the
end and expanked it on the bottom. He had he
had another part, So that might have read awkward A
(35:27):
suggestion which I can cut out, but I may. I
took the suggestion, but I just didn't read it. Is
it a mystery suggestion? Then? Um? Yeah, maybe I'm surprise you. Well,
if you want to send us a mystery suggestion, we
are welcome to those. You can tweet to us at
s y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slafe Stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
(35:50):
and you can hang out with us at our nice
little warm home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
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(36:15):
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