Ben & Jerry's new green freezers blaze frozen trails

A world without ice cream is unthinkable. But serving up frozen food in the U.S. in the middle of the summer (when we scream most loudly for ice cream) is creating greenhouse gases due to the hydroflourocarbons used in most refrigerators and freezers. Something must be done.

Enter Ben & Jerry's, whose parent, Unilever (NYSE: UL) has been working with Greenpeace, McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) and Pepsico, Inc. (NYSE: PEP) to develop more global-warming-friendly (or unfriendly?) freezers. The company will be rolling out the country's first HFC-free freezer in convenience stores and supermarkets across the U.S.; and as a bonus to your favorite ice cream outpost, the green freezers use about 10% less energy than their HFC-emitting cousins.

The new freezers use butane rather than HFC as a refrigerant and required special permission from the EPA; which has banned the use of butane and propane (which are used throughout Europe and Central and South America for refrigerators and freezers) because these hydrocarbons are flammable and are blamed for depleting the ozone layer. The 2,000 freestanding Ben & Jerry's freezers are just a test, and it may be eight to 10 years before the company is allowed to replace all of its 100,000 freezers nationwide.

While it will likely be an extremely moderate impact on expense reduction, the rollout of green freezers stands to underscore Ben & Jerry's ethical, do-gooder image in the mind of its consumers and give it yet another edge over rival Haagen-Dazs.