Hitachi lied about its Eco appliances
April 21st, 2009 by James
Remember all these commercials about how Hitachi “does everything for the earth” by producing amazing energy-saving products that cut down on CO2 emissions?
Well, it turns out they were bullshit. It has been discovered that Hitachi has been selling special “energy saving” refrigerators based on false claims about a manufacturing process that supposedly involved huge CO2 emission reductions and recycling old products.
Update: Check Mainichi’s English article for more details. It would seem that Hitachi may be able to get off with a mere warning from the government….
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Some clarification: The refrigerators themselves are not the problem. The issue is that Hitachi claimed they were recycling old refrigerators and using that recycled material as insulation in new refrigerators, thereby resulting in an energy savings of 48% in the manufacturing process. Except that they weren’t recycling in any major way, most refrigerators had no recycled material in them and those that did had only very small amounts (one report said the recycled material was used only in the top panel or ceiling of the refrigerator).
However the refrigerators themselves work as advertised and are “energy efficient” while operating. Your second paragraph reads like the refrigerators themselves are not energy efficient, which is not the case. It was the manufacturing process which was not as energy efficient as claimed.
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Thanks – post edited.
Any effort to cut emissions is BS. Sure, energy saving cars might do that, but there’s more created than usual for manufacturing the car. Or so I hear. c02 isn’t even a pollutant. Lie away, global warming itself is a lie. All that ice that’s melting on one side of Antarctica is simply forming on the other (and increasing). You mean we have variation?! GASP! WHO THE FRIK KNEW! Look up ice, australia, Antarctica.
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I cant imagine they get off lightly with that sort of thing in Japan. Lets hope they get fined.
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the fact that they lied about the manufacturing is a horrible thing. MISLABELED and we have seen our fill of mislabeled goods/foods in this country. whether the fridge works efficiently or not is not the issue. lying is.
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Good for Hitachi. Maybe the global warming crowd will figure global warming is a “huge scam” to begin with.
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It’s not only about man-made global warming which is still highly debated. For me, it’s just about air quality and efficiently and fairly using resources. You can argue till you’re blue in the face that, for example, SUVs don’t cause global warming, but you’ll never convince anyone that SUVs aren’t creating pollutants.
There are laws against “noise pollution”, but SUVs get a special class to circumvent pollution standards. And now Hitachi is flat out lying about their product so they can sell it to people who actually care about at least slightly improving quality of life. That’s not cool at all.
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Most ‘Green’ products are not so green. In terms of human effort and in energy used, recycling stuff that has been processed and manufactured into a final consumer product is usually more wasteful than a product made from new materials. What is needed are better manufacturing processes and designs that result in end-user products that are quick and easy to recycle.
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