Budweiser has been running an ad showing an old refrigerator being moved to the garage when the new one is purchased. It says that although it doesn’t have a water dispenser or an ice-maker, it has plenty of room for what’s really important, i.e. Cold Beer. While the ad is entertaining and does make a good point about reuse and storage capacity, it fails to consider one of the main reasons we replace appliances today: improved energy efficiency. We will only see our electric bills go down if we replace appliances with more energy efficient ones. Adding a new appliance, even one that is energy star compliant, while still running the old one will cause our electric bill to go up.

Watch the ad on Youtube (notice the Energy Star label on the new fridge):

A much better solution to the desire to have a beer fridge is to buy an energy efficient mini-fridge instead of using your old inefficient full-sized one. You also can probably have your old fridge hauled away for free when the new one arrives instead of paying to have it removed once it eventually dies. If you absolutely need the storage capacity of a full size fridge, the energy savings on a new one will quickly cover the cost of purchase. Buying a new main refrigerator and a second no-frills new one and tossing your old one will probably end up costing a lot less than using your old fridge in a new way. Cheers!