Time for a new Refrigerator?

You might wait until after July 29 to shop.

May 2008 Consumer Reports has tests of many new refrigerators, but the key point that they report is that those built after April 28, 2008 must be 20% more efficient than the current federal standard. If the 3.5 million Energy-Star qualified refrigerators sold in 2006 had met that new standard, we'd use 90 million fewer kilowatt hours of electricity per year, equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of 12,500 cars per year!

You can find out more in the magazine or go to http://www.energystar.gov/, but labels on the new refrigerators don't have to be updated by retailers until July 29th, so unless your food will spoil before then you might consider waiting for all our sakes (and those of the polar bears we always see floating on ice set adrift by global warming).