Kitchen Hazards Unveiled

Your Guide to Oven Safety

Welcome to the heart of the home—the kitchen. Amid the aroma of culinary wonders lies a landscape fraught with potential hazards. From toppling ranges to shattering cookware, the dangers are subtle yet prevalent.

In our exploration, we’re taking a look at the three primary adversaries: range tipovers, cookware mishaps, and the looming threat of cooking fires. These dangers aren't just about burns; they encompass a complex web of risks that demand attention.

Avoiding Common Oven Related Accidents

We’re going to take a look at the three most common types of oven-related accidents. While you think immediately of getting burned, you also have to think of rage tipovers and shattering cookware. 

Range Tipovers

Almost 40,000 people were injured during a 20-year NIH study, just from a range tipping over. Unsurprisingly, children are the ones most at risk. When left unsupervised, kids love to climb, And if an oven door is left open? You can bet they will climb on that, unfortunately, causing the range to tip. 

A few ways you can prevent your range from tipping over- 

If your range doesn’t have one, install an anti-tip bracket to keep it securely in place. 

Never place a heavy tray on an oven door that’s been left open. (This is the most common reason adults get injured in a range tipover.) 

Drape a towel on the oven handle if a pan is cooling to remind you that it’s still there. 

Cookware Injuries

In the same NIH study, more than 37,000 people were injured while using cookware. Hot glassware can shatter (yes, even ‘heat-proof’ dishes), and handles can absolutely burn. 

To avoid both of these instances, remember these tips- 

Don’t take a dish directly from the freezer to the oven or the other way around. 

Don’t add liquid after a dish is hot, or put a hot dish onto a cold or wet surface as it can cause shock to the dish. 

If a dish has become cracked or chipped, stop using it. Those chips will eventually become cracks, spreading over time until the piece shatters. 

Make sure to turn handles out to the sides rather than being over a working burner. 

Cooking Fires

Cooking fires account for 2 of every 5 reported home fires. Of those, unattended equipment accounts for 1 in 3, and half are set off by fat, grease, or oil, according to the National Fire Protection Association. 

In the NIH study, approximately 16,262 people were treated for injuries caused by contact with the stove, most commonly for burns. 

If you spend a lot of time in your kitchen, take a minute to learn these safety tips to protect yourself and your home. 

Stay in the kitchen if you are frying, grilling, or broiling something. 

If you’re simmering, baking, or roasting, stay at home and check on your food often. A timer on your phone can help. 

Make sure to keep anything that can catch fire away from the stovetop. This can be things like food packaging, pot holders, kitchen towels, and cookbooks. 

If a fire starts in your oven, turn it off and leave the door closed. This will suffocate the fire. 

Always keep a lid near to hand to smother small grease fires. You can slide the lid over the pan and turn off the burn. 

Keep a fire extinguisher with a minimum rating of 5-B:C on hand in your kitchen or as close as possible. 

If a fire gets out of hand, leave the house and call 911. 

Gas Ranges vs. Electric Ovens and Safety Concerns For Each 

Gas 

Gas stoves burn natural gas, which does generate a number of invisible by-products. The biggest concern to our health is the production of nitrogen dioxide or NO2. According to Josiah Kephart, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Drexel University, this is produced when natural gas is burned at high temperatures when there is also nitrogen in the atmosphere. “We’ve known for a long time that [nitrogen dioxide] has many harmful effects on health,” says Kephart. 

While the Environmental Protection Agency regulates outdoor NO2 emissions, there are no standards for indoor exposure. Nevertheless studies dating back decades have shown the harmful effects from the no2 in gas cooking stoves. 

Studies have also found that unburned natural gas leaks from stoves, and contains the known carcinogen, benzene. Additionally, cooking, in general, creates fine particulates, which can cause or exacerbate respiratory problems. 

However, studies in this area have also long been linked to political lobbying groups, so data might be skewed one way or the other. As usual, politics is beyond our purview here, so we suggest doing your own digging. 

Electric 

Recent attention to the gas stove’s environmental impact has turned some away from the once-preferred chef’s stove. However, while electric stoves are the current darling of the industry, they also have their own issues. 

Courtesy of Mike Jones

According to a report by the National Fire Protection Association, they do tend to have far greater fire risks. A 2020 report by the NFPA showed that households with electric stoves reported fires at a rate 2.6 times higher than those with gas stoves. Equally staggering, the death rate of electric-run households was 3.4 times higher than those that had gas appliances. And the injury rate? That was nearly 5 times greater. 

General Safety Tips In the Kitchen 

We’ve taken both general tips and those from the community to bring to your attention. *

You need to be sure you are watching your food and your hands so you do not get burned; both are hot. Pay attention to smooth-top ranges, as the ceramic glass can be very hot for a while, even with the burner off. The same goes for gas stove grates above the burner.

Roll up your sleeves before cooking. Loose-fitting clothing can catch on fire.

Both electric and non-electric ovens have a thermostat to control how high the heat goes, and then they cycle the heat on and off to maintain the correct temperature. Can thermostats go bad? Yes, equally in both electric and non-electric ovens. ((ARS Note: This is one of the key reasons we suggest having your oven maintained regularly!))

Clean the stove, oven, and burners regularly to prevent grease buildup.

Use the right cookware both for your type of range and for the size of the burner. 

Only use cookware in the oven that is meant to go in the oven. Plastics will melt and either damage your oven (ask us how we know.) Metals, on the other hand, can damage the oven by heating it improperly and will almost certainly cause your food to cook improperly. 

Keep items that can catch fire, such as dish towels and pot holders, away [from heat sources].

Overheated foods can cause a fire. With that in mind, cook your food for the recommended cooking time, and use oven mitts to protect yourself when taking it out. 

Plug cooking appliances directly into an outlet. Never use an extension cord for a cooking appliance.

Tuck appliance cords out of reach of children.

If your oven has malfunctioned, it’s not safe to use it. Whether it is gas or electric, it needs to be seen by a professional. You can have gas leaks, your oven overheating, or the heat cutting out randomly and without notice. 

Finally, read the manual for your range. The manufacturer included it so you could get the best experience from your oven, and reading it will only help you. 

And there you have it—a peek behind the oven door, revealing the quirks and perils lurking in our culinary havens. Remember, while your kitchen might be a stage for gourmet wonders, it's also a hotspot for potential misadventures. Stay vigilant, cook safely, and should your appliances ever decide to throw a cooking tantrum, don't hesitate to summon the professionals at Appliance Rescue Service. Until then, may your kitchen adventures be filled with delicious triumphs and minimal mishaps. 

Website 

Office Number:  (214) 599-0055

Additional Reading:

Places to Avoid: The Paw Version! 

Why The Media Wants You To Be Scared Of Your Gas Stove

Help I Melted Plastic In My Oven

*Some commentary may have been adjusted for clarity or length. 

Chill Hacks Unveiled: Mastering Your Fridge's Microzones for Fresher Foods

 From Crisper Drawers to Door Dilemmas - Your Complete Guide to Optimizing Refrigerator Storage and Banishing Food Wastage

Ever wondered why your refrigerator seems like an enigmatic labyrinth of varying temperatures? Brace yourself for a surprising revelation: your fridge isn't the uniform cold box you think it is. Instead, it's a tapestry of microclimates, each with its own purpose and ideal use. Buckle up for a journey into the hidden world of fridge dynamics, where thermodynamics and food storage collide to challenge common assumptions.

Prepare to unravel the mystery behind why your leftovers might fare better on one shelf than another, why your greens shouldn't cozy up with your meats, and why that jar of jam ended up frozen solid in the back. Join us as we break down the misconceptions about your refrigerator's temperature zones and unveil the secrets to optimizing freshness and food safety within its chilly confine

Refrigerator Revelations: Unveiling the Myth of Uniform Temperatures

Let's start with breaking down a common misconception: your refrigerator is not all one temperature. We know it's a strange thought. Most of our clients are very shocked when they discover this. But it's true. 

Instead, your refrigerator is made up of many different microzones. Now, your microzones work based on the concept of thermodynamics. We know, we know, that's not something any of us want to try and dive into on a Wednesday night. And to be frank, it's beyond anything we need to go into. What matters is understanding that heat rises. Even in a cold environment like your refrigerator, heat will always rise*. So, the warmest portions of your refrigerator will be the top shelf of your refrigerator because of that principle, and also the door of your refrigerator because it's constantly being exposed to warm air as you open and close your refrigerator throughout the day. No matter how fast your refrigerator returns to temperature, there is still fluctuation. That fluctuation will directly affect whatever you store on the door of your refrigerator. We'll go into more of that later on in the article. For now, it's enough to understand that it's an issue. 

The Secret Behind Microzones: How Your Fridge Works on Thermodynamics

The different zones in your refrigerator are  your door, top shelf, middle shelf, bottom shelf, and any drawers you have, like a crisper drawer, cheese drawer, or deli meat drawer. Each of these different zones has been engineered for a different purpose, and the shape of the drawer directly impacts how temperature and humidity affect the food inside the drawer.  

Crisper Drawers Decoded: Optimizing Humidity for Fresher Produce

Let's take a quick side note to explain the different drawers that might come with your refrigerator. Your crisper drawer is typically one to two drawers on the bottom of your refrigerator. Whether you have a French door, a single door, or a top-of-the-line Sub Zero refrigerator, the bottommost drawer or drawers is for fruits and vegetables. The reason for this ties into the microclimates like we talked about earlier. This is the coldest part of your refrigerator, and it fluctuates between cold and colder. Now, your fridge's design might be two drawers side by side or one on top of another. We have worked on both varieties. It doesn't matter for the most part. Either way, there is typically a small flap or a slider that allows you to set which one has lower humidity and which one has higher humidity. 

Lower humidity is typically for fruits, and higher humidity is for vegetables. This is where we will get into some exceptions in just a minute. These drawers work on humidity as well as temperature. Your fruits need lower humidity, which the slider or air flap on the drawers allows them to adjust. Just because it's not extra fancy or has dials or switches that you need to work to learn doesn't mean that it's not effective. Companies have discovered what works and, for the time being at least, are sticking to it. Higher humidity allows your vegetables to maintain the most moisture, keeping them from wilting for longer. 

Mastering Middle Shelves: The Stable Haven for Dairy and Deli Delights

But Blogger, you say, what about the shelves in the middle? What are those for? Oh dear, reader, those shelves are, in what we said earlier, the most stable portion of your fridge. This is the section that is most likely to stay at the temperature for what you've set your refrigerator to. These drawers, whether you have one or two, sometimes even more, will be where you store your cheeses and deli meats. Cheeses and deli meats need to be kept away from fluctuations in temperature to ensure that they stay tasty and free from bacteria for as long as possible. They also don't need to worry about humidity like your fruits and vegetables, which is why they are just drawers. 

Strategic Food Placement: Where Every Zone Shines in Your Fridge

Now that you understand how your refrigerator works and how some of the more specialized sections should be used let's look at your fridge as a whole. This breakdown for storing your food comes from years of research into maximizing space, freshness, and food safety. So, at the top of your fridge,  as we mentioned earlier, that is going to be the section that fluctuates the most, and therefore, is the section where you should store already cooked foods; this is your leftovers,  this is the rotisserie chicken that you're going to have tomorrow night for dinner or the green bean casserole that your neighbor brought over because they had a little too much. Things like that. 

Your middle shelves are where you should store your dairy products. Cheeses, butter, eggs, and other things that need to be kept as stable as possible. 

Your bottom shelves are where you store raw meats and fish. If you really wanted to, all of the other shelves, ,could be swapped around. If you follow the other tips we will talk about, your food will stay fresh. Maybe not for as long as they could, but they will stay fresh for about the average length of time that you might expect. For your raw meats and fish, you store them at the bottom of your refrigerator not just to keep them fresh for longer and to butkeep them in that cold air that doesn't fluctuate as much. It's also for food safety. Raw meats tend to leak. You don't want that getting on the rest of your food.  

Now, we're not saying you should just throw a hunk of raw meat or the fish your cousin caught for dinner tonight onto these shelves. You store these on the bottom shelf because they won't leak into the drawers when wrapped properly. Your crisper drawers are designed so things from on top, unless they spill or overflow, won't get into the drawers. Instead, they drip around and under. Your shelves, though, say the top and middle shelves aren't designed the same. Put meat on those shelves, and you will contaminate the shelves below.   

Decoding the Door Dilemma: What to Store (and Avoid) on Your Fridge Door 

The one thing we haven't talked about yet is your refrigerator door. On your refrigerator door, it is good to put things like condiments. They're not bothered much by fluctuating temperatures. Salad dressing falls into the same category. Even the ones you might make yourself can still be stored in the container and left on your fridge door. Soda, water bottles, sports drinks are great to put on your refrigerator door, so they're easy to grab. 

Things that maybe shouldn't go on your door that you wouldn't consider: 

Nut butters

Milk 

Glass bottles 

We've all done it. Heck, in your Blogger's fridge right now (or at least right now as of the time of this initially being written) is a container of milk. The reason you don't want to store it there normally is because it will go bad faster. In our household, however, it doesn't typically last long enough, so we choose to take that risk. Which is what you can do as well. Nut butters, however, and glass bottles are less conditional. Nut butters like almond butter and cashew butter will start to separate when kept at unstable temperatures. They start to either become hard or oily, they don't taste as good, and they're harder to spread. Then you've got glass bottles, which is more of a practicality issue. All it takes is one slam of the door, and there goes all that lovely wine you were planning on sharing. 

A refrigerator with some things stored properly and some not. How many can you find?

Courtesy of the USDA

Versus, this refrigerator which has taken into consideration the various tips and safety measures that we talked about, and the size and design of this particular refrigerator.

Courtesy of the USDA

The FIFO Method: Saving Money and Maximizing Freshness in Your Fridge

How do you save money then? The answer is the First In First Out method. It is a very simple concept, but it does take a bit of thinking as you implement it. You put the newest foods at the back of the shelf and bring the oldest foods towards the front. You can do this with everything or just things you buy duplicates of. An example would be putting an already open pint of sour cream at the front and a new one at the back of the shelf. 

 We aren't saying you have to do this every day. That would be ridiculous, and you would end up wasting electricity and letting in all the hot air you're trying to avoid. But once a week or so, when you go grocery shopping, do this, and then you have all of the oldest food towards the front automatically when you need to go and plan for meals or just need a quick snack. The First In, First Out method is utilized by restaurants and other corporate-level food services. It's a way to ensure your food is used long before it spoils.  

The Perils of Overstuffing: Why Air Circulation is Key in Your Refrigerator

A final important note that we think cannot be overstated is that you should not be overstuffing any section of your fridge. Your refrigerator cannot do its job properly if it can't breathe. If the air cannot circulate around your refrigerator, the microclimates we discussed will go to extremes. The coldest section, that bottom shelf, and your crispers will end up freezing. Meanwhile, your top shelf and door will be much warmer than they should be, causing things to spoil. This is how you end up pulling out the jar of jam from the back of a shelf and finding out that it's frozen solid in the time that it's been in your refrigerator. While sections like your crispers have an optimum level of food in them, say 67%, the rest of your fridge is more a matter of air being able to move around. That one does take a little bit of trial and error. It becomes much easier if you pay attention and start with the tips we've taught you today. 

Keeping Cool: When to Call for Professional Refrigerator Assistance

Remember, your refrigerator is not just a glorified cold box—it's a meticulously engineered system of microzones. By understanding its nuances, from the fluctuating temperatures of the top shelf to the humidity-controlled crisper drawers, you hold the key to prolonging the freshness of your groceries and minimizing food waste.

So, bid farewell to haphazard food placement and embrace the art of organized refrigeration. Employ the 'First In First Out' method, keep meats low, dairy mid, and condiments on the door, and most importantly, avoid overstuffing to let your fridge breathe. By following these simple strategies, you're not just managing your fridge; you're preserving flavor, maximizing space, and ensuring a longer shelf life for your groceries.

However, if you encounter issues beyond the realm of organization—such as temperature inconsistencies, malfunctioning water lines, or any other fridge-related quandaries—don't hesitate to reach out for professional help. Appliance Rescue Service is here to assist you, whether it's a troubleshooting call or a need for expert maintenance. Contact us today via our website or give us a call to schedule an appointment and ensure your refrigerator runs smoothly, keeping your food fresh and your kitchen hassle-free.

Website

Call: (214) 599-0055 

Additional Reading: 

The Hidden Messages Behind the Odors in Your Refrigerator

Why Is My Refrigerator Making Weird Noises!? 

* If you are a physicist, or other scientist who studies thermodynamics and we have gotten this wrong in certain instances, please understand that we are talking solely about heat in a refrigerator.

Household Hauntings: The Frightening Reality of Appliance Neglect

 Don't Let Your Home Become a Haunted House

We’re a day late, but still very much in the spooky spirit at Appliance Rescue Service HQ! We’ve waited all year long for our favorite holiday, and we’re back with some of the terrors that can plague your home. Now join us as we dive into a haunted Halloween story that could take place in your very own kitchen. 

It's a dark and stormy night, as any good Halloween should be. You are baking away in your kitchen, looking forward to handing out goodies for the few brave trick-or-treaters. All is quiet in your home, and it’s looking to be a good night. 

 When you start smelling smoke, you think it must be the cookies you have going in the oven. But no, your oven isn't up to temperature yet, and the cookies are still in front of you. You open up the oven, thinking maybe there's something burning on the bottom, but no, there's nothing there, and yet the smell of smoke is getting stronger. 

You rush around looking for the source, and you keep coming back to your oven. That's when you notice there's a flicker coming from behind. Your wiring finally gave out and caught fire during the preheating stage. 

You rush to turn off the oven and grab your emergency fire extinguisher that you keep handy. Nothing else caught fire; nothing else has been damaged, except for the back of your stove and a bit of your wall. But the smell is gone; the fire is gone. 

You take a deep breath thanking heaven that it's not as bad as it could have been. Except now you hear a dripping. Drip drip drip. You take a deep breath and hope that the trick-or-treaters will forgive you because it seems like there's yet another problem. You start to search, and you find that this time, there is an issue with your dishwasher. It's a matter of your dishwasher valves having given out. You can't unplug it. You aren’t even sure where that plug is. 

So you rush to grab towels from your linen closet and throw them on the floor in front of it, praying that the damage won't be too bad and that you can catch it all in time. What else could possibly go wrong, you moan to yourself. 

Except it's Halloween, and that's a question you should never ask. As you kneel on the floor, picking up soaking wet towels to toss into the wash, there's a rattle, a rattle and a shake, and a vibrating unholy sound that is one part screaming metal and one part rattling of the chains of the Damned. 

You rush to your laundry room to find that it has rattled itself away from the wall and is even louder when you're standing in front of it. The clothes inside of it are perfectly fine, but you're not so certain about the wall. In rattling its way forward, your dryer has shaken down everything from the wall above it and is currently playing tug-of-war with both the electrical outlet and the vent housing. At this point, all you can do is pray that the lint catch has been cleaned recently and that it doesn't catch on fire as well. As you step forward to try and shove the dryer back into place, or maybe unplug it you, you slip. 

Your feet go out from under you, and you land smack on your back, feeling like you’ve been horribly maligned by someone designing a scene for one of the Final Destination movies. You stare up at the ceiling and notice that there are spots of mold creeping across your ceiling. Had they been there long? Were they the reason that this whole night had kicked off? Just one long hallucination induced by black mold? 

We hope you enjoyed that haunted tale, but take heed of the dangers that it represents. As taking care of your home and it’s needs means it will take care of you as well.  Other than the sounds that your dryer might make having been kicked up a little for narrative embellishment, everything we pointed out as a potential failure point for a non-maintained appliance can actually happen. All of these are issues that can occur in any home with any appliance. All of these spooky instances can and do happen in your home when appliances aren't cared for properly or regularly. Some appliances, like your oven or your dishwasher, might be able to get away with only yearly maintenance checks. Others, like your refrigerator, your dryer, or your ice maker, require more frequent checks, typically every 6 months if not every three. 

Appliance Rescue Service offers just that. We can work with you to set up a recurring maintenance schedule so that you don't have to worry about these issues. We review your appliances from top to bottom, looking for issues before they become hazardous to you or your home. If you're interested in finding out more about how we can work with you to ensure your home keeps running smoothly, you can give us a call at  ((214) 599-0055), or reach out to us through our website. We will work with you to set up a time that fits best with your schedule.

Additional Reading
Halloween Horrors in Your Home 

37 Reasons To Have Your Appliances Maintained Regularly

Explaining the Basics of Appliance Recycling

Why It Matters To You And The Planet

Imagine a world where every home, every neighborhood, and every city makes a conscious choice towards a greener, more sustainable future. A world where your old appliances, once destined for the scrapyard, find new life and purpose, reducing your energy bills, lessening the load on our aging power grids, and shielding our fragile environment from harm. This world isn't a distant dream; it's within reach, and the key to unlocking this greener reality lies in something you might have never considered - appliance recycling. In the pages ahead, we'll unravel the complexities of this vital practice and show you how, by recycling your appliances, you can become an eco-warrior, an economic champion, and a guardian of the planet. Welcome to the beginning of a journey towards a brighter, more sustainable tomorrow.

Unveiling Appliance Recycling: A Green Solution

Courtesy of Vlada Karpovich

Let's start by clarifying something: recycling, surprisingly, can mean a couple of different things when it comes to appliances. It might mean the resale or reusing of a unit, or it might mean the breaking down of the unit as far as possible and reselling the valuable scraps while everything else is sent on to a landfill. This second option is especially problematic, as it does not contain or safely dispose of the hazardous chemicals contained within the refrigerator. Our point here is that "recycling" can be a vague term that does not always line up with best environmental practices.

It is important to figure out how to recycle your appliances and how to do it safely, as the outcome is directly tied to your future health and that of everyone else. We all know that at this point.

The concept of reduce, reuse and recycle has probably been drilled into our collective consciousness for 30 plus years at this point - at least in the United States.

What most people don't know, though, is that recycling doesn't have to just be paying somebody else to take the appliance off your hands. In fact, there are several ways that recycling appliances can actually benefit you. By working with us through this four post series, we'll show you how you can benefit from recycling appliances, how the environment benefits, your partners you can look to in the process, and how to go about it.

Eco-Warriors Wanted: The Environmental Impact of Appliance Recycling

Now that we've told you why you want to be involved with recycling, let's take a look at the environmental impact of it.

The most obvious benefit of recycling household appliances is personal energy savings. The lower bill is nice, but especially nice is the knowledge that you're helping reduce overall usage in your area. 

Think of how often during the summer Texas has rolling brownouts because of the age of our electric grid. How often do you have to prioritize utilizing your washer versus running your air conditioner? Now think about if every household was able to switch over to modern, efficient, energy-saving appliances. Given that household appliances are among the biggest draws on the electric grid, you can see how beneficial this could be to Texas as a whole.

Now we won't say that industry, agriculture, entertainment venues or schools don't have their own impact on the grid. However, those things are much larger than our purview here at Appliance Rescue.

Recycling your major appliances allows for the recovery and reuse of materials. For every appliance that gets recycled and broken down, that's one less that has to be created from scratch. The energy isn't put into mining new materials from the Earth; the fuel isn't used for processing those materials. Instead, what has already been used can be reused, and the hard workers in our factories and appliance sections are still able to be paid.

Another benefit is that the recycling of these parts reduces the emission of harmful substances that negatively impact our ozone layer. 

In Texas, we are acutely aware of the heat every summer. You have days at a time where you're told "don't go outside if you can avoid it," because it is just that hot. We are more acutely aware of this than people in some of the farther north areas of the country. Part of the reason for the growing heat year-over-year is the impact we've already made on our ozone layer.

While we cannot go in-depth into all of the myriad things (both caused by humans and caused naturally by cycles within the Earth) that are affecting the ozone layer, we can say that the materials used within major appliances do affect it if allowed to just release into a landfill. If we could stop adding to that, we won't say that it's a miraculous cure for the heat - but it is one less step toward making it any hotter.

Another topic to consider is E-Waste. For the last decade or two, the concept of e-waste has started to filter into our understanding of recycling and issues with the environment.

Courtesy of Pixabay

Many of us wouldn't look at our appliances and think that they would be contributing to this problem. After all, e-waste is from things like cell phones, computers, tablets and gaming consoles - not your refrigerator or your oven, right?

Nope! As we shift towards smarter appliances, this means that your e-waste also includes your appliances. There are circuit boards within your stove. There are tablets built into your refrigerator. If you've got Wi-Fi connectivity, that requires its own set of bits and bobs built in, which means another layer to be conscious of when disposing of your appliances.

However, all of this e-waste contains valuable resources that can be reprocessed and reused. Metals, glass, plastics: all of these can be returned to a purified state and reused for making other materials, either for new appliances or for something else entirely.

Think back to science class as a kid. One day, if you were lucky, your teacher pulled out this beautiful silvery liquid to show the way that it could collect on surfaces, be manipulated, and then group back together easily at room temperature. And then, at the end of the display, you were told that although it looked like fun, it wasn't. It was definitely not something you could play with bare-handed because it would get into your skin, then into your bloodstream and from there into your brain.

Or maybe you remember learning about the story of Alice in Wonderland and the dark reasons why the Mad Hatter is mad in the first place.

Yes, we're talking about mercury. Mercury is in many older models of refrigerators; more of them than you might think. Unfortunately, when old refrigerators aren't recycled properly, that mercury does leech out of them and into the ground below. Then it works its way into the water, which then goes into the plants, on into animals... And while it does take time, just like microplastics, it eventually ends up in what you're eating. Even for all of our best attempts at eating organic, or fair trade, or vegan - without taking care of where materials are disposed of, it still circles back around. Everyone - elders from even the most isolated tribes all the way to scientists studying in their labs - will tell you on every level, everything is connected. Unfortunately, that means that if you feed the water table mercury, you will eventually be feeding it to yourself.

A final point to consider is that recycling major appliances or even minor ones as we'll cover in a later post, does not simply benefit you. It doesn't just benefit the planet. It also greatly impacts our economy in a positive way.

With the amount of trash that gets collected just in a single year, there is an amazing amount of job security. You need people to sort everything. You need people to handle the processing. You need people to handle extraction. All of these (and so many more) are necessary jobs that would not exist if not for recycling. More importantly, the industry can stand to grow further, given how little is actually being recycled as of right now.

By recycling your major appliances as a consumer, you are telling the industry as a whole that this is something that matters. You are saying that you want to ensure it continues, and that it is worth their time and resources to see it done more often or more thoroughly.

Not only do you support jobs when you recycle, you also support the creation of a circular economy. When things are broken, they have multiple options. Right now, you might look at it and see there are only two choices: take it to a landfill (and probably pay a fee), or call somebody like us and have it repaired.

But what about when it gets to the point that even our best technicians can't keep your appliances running any longer? It might not be that we don't know how to fix something, but instead that we don't have the materials or tools, or that the parts simply are not being made for this model any longer. At that point, a circular economy says, instead of sending this off to a landfill to become just another piece of garbage (taking up space and not having any use), the next step is to break it down. Take every single piece and material that we can out of this. Instead of having to purchase new, raw materials from a company that's going to rip them out of the Earth, we can reuse what we've already harvested. The circular economy is good for you the consumer, it's good for the economy of the United States, and it's good for the planet! Three wins in one.

Leading the Way: The Responsible Appliance Disposal (RAD) Program

If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that at several points we touched on how few people or industries or companies recycle right now. We've also mentioned that recycling does not always mean the best environmental practices.That is where the Responsible Appliance Disposal, or RAD, program comes in.

They are a leader in responsible recycling practices. The RAD program was developed by the US environmental protection agencies partnership, launched in 2006 to protect our ozone, cut greenhouse gases and benefit communities like ours.

The RAD program recognizes partners all over the country who are committed to collecting and disposing of old appliances using the best practices. These partners are going well beyond what is currently required by federal law.

 They take on the responsibility to recover things like insolation foam out of  end-of-life appliances. They also collect the less efficient models of appliances from the secondary market. From here they work with recyclers to ensure that the materials are handled properly and broken down safely to comply with federal law. 

Together, we've uncovered the immense potential of appliance recycling and its profound impact on our world. As you embark on your journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, remember that Appliance Rescue is here to support you every step of the way. When your faithful appliances are in need of care, trust our expert technicians to breathe new life into them, ensuring they serve you for years to come. Let's make recycling a part of our daily lives and embrace a future where both our planet and your appliances thrive. Join us in this eco-conscious mission, one repair at a time. 

You can reach out to us via our contact page or by giving us a call ((214) 599-0055). You can also connect with us on Facebook. 

Additional Resources For Things We’ve Mentioned Throughout :

Waste | Take Care of Texas

https://www.epa.gov/rad/responsible-appliance-disposal-rad-partners-affiliates-recyclers

Additional Reading: 

https://appliance-rescue-service.com/blog/appliance-disposal2023